LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. % 



Chap. ; 

| she/f .._.._-,z.qt... 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



A MONTH 

IN 

SWITZERLAND 



By the same Author, 
Demy 8vo. 14^. 

EGYPT OF THE PHARAOHS AND 
OF THE KEDIVE. 



SELECTION from NOTICES by the PRESS. 
The Spectator. 

'We have in this volume a thoughtful, almost exhaustive, treatment of 
a subject too often handled by mere dilettante writers, who dismiss as 
unworthy of notice the problems with which they are unable to cope. . . . 
We heartily commend Mr. Zincke's delightful book as a fresh pleasure to 
the thoughtful reader.' 

The Literary Churchman. 
' A more independent and original volume of Egyptian travel than at this 
time of day we should have thought possible. Mr. Zincke has a quickness 
of eye, a vigour of judgment, and a raciness of style which place him far 
above the ordinary run of travellers. . . . Readers will lose much if they 
do not make some acquaintance with this truly remarkable volume.' 

The Guardian. 

' Each chapter takes some one topic, treats it in sharp piquant style, and 
generally throws some new light upon it, or makes it reflect some new light 
upon something else. If these bright and sparkling pages are taken as 
containing suggestions to be worked out for oneself and accepted or rejected 
in the light of more mature knowledge, they will be found full of value, ' 

The Saturday Review, 
' Mr. Zincke speaks like a man of rare powers of perception, with an 
intense love of nature in her various moods, and an intellectual sympathy 
broad and deep as the truth itself. ' 

The Westminster Review. 
' A very pleasant and interesting book. . . . Mr. Zincke tells his readers 
exactly such facts as they would wish to know. The style is captivating.' 

The Examiner. 
'A series of brilliant and suggestive essays.' 



SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 Waterloo Place. 



MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 




F. BARHAM ZINCKE 

VICAR OF WHERSTEAD 
CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN 



Deo Opt. Max. 




LONDON 

SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 

1873 



All rights reserved 



PREFACE 



The legitimate USE of a Preface, like that of a 
Prologue ? is merely to give explanations that will be 
necessary, and to save from expectations that would 
be delusive. I will, therefore, at once say to those 
who may have read my 1 Egypt of the Pharaohs and 
of the Kedive/ that this little book belongs to the 
same family. The cast of thought and the aims of 
the two are kindred, and both endeavour to do their 
work by similar methods. They are, alike, efforts to 
attain to a right reading, and a right interpretation 
of nature, and of man. The differences between 
them are, perhaps, such as must result from the 
differences in the matter itself they had, respectively, 
to take account o£ The field, in which the younger 
sister here makes some studies, is small in extent ; 



PREFACE 



its physical conditions, too, are those of our own part 
of the world, and its human issues those of our own 
times. It ought, therefore, to be looked at from very 
near points of view, and to be exhibited in pictures 
of much detail and minuteness. The field, however, 
which the elder sister surveyed, was wide in area, and 
rich with scenes of singularly varied character. Its 
place, indeed, in the panorama of nature possesses an 
interest which is exclusively its own ; and its history 
includes a chapter in the construction of thought and 
of society, of which — while again its own with almost 
equal exclusiveness — the right appreciation is neces- 
sary for the right understanding of some contem- 
porary and subsequent chapters in general history, 
and not least of the one that is at this day unfolding 
itself, with ourselves for the actors, we being, also, at 
the same time, the material dealt with, and fashioned. 
So it presented itself to my own mind> and so I 
attempted to set it before the reader's mind. 

To those, however, who are unacquainted with the 
book I have just referred to in explanation of the 
character and aims of its successor, I would describe 
the impulse under which both of them were written 
in the familiar words, ' My heart was hot within me ; 
and, while I was thus musing, the fire kindled, and at 



PREFACE 



vii 



the last I spake with my tongue.' I had been much 
stirred by a month spent among the Swiss mountains, 
not only by what might have been their effect upon 
me had I been alone, but also by what I had seen of 
their effect upon others — to one of whom, a child who 
was with me throughout the excursion (if mention of 
so small a matter, as it may appear to some, can be 
allowed), a little space has been given in the following 
pages ; and this it was that first made me wish to fix 
in words the scenes I had passed through, the impres- 
sions I had received from them, and the thoughts 
that had grown out of them. But how unlike was 
the landscape, and those who peopled it, to what had 
come before the eye, and the mind's eye, in Egypt ! 
Instead of the long life-giving river and the broad 
life-repelling desert, both so replete with history, the 
import of which is not yet dead, as well as with 
natural phenomena of an unwonted character to eyes 
familiarised with the aspects of our little sea-girt 
sanctuary, as we fondly deem it, Switzerland offered 
for contemplation, in the order of nature, the ice and 
snow world of its cloud-piercing mountains ; and, in 
the order of what is of existing human concern, 
unflagging industry, patient frugality, intelligently- 
adapted education, a natural form of land-tenure, and 



viii 



PREFACE 



popular government ; and invited the spectator of its 
scenery, as well as of the social and intellectual 
fermentation of portions of its people, in strong 
contrast to the immobility of other portions, to 
meditate on some of the new elements, which modern 
knowledge, and modern conditions of society, may 
have contributed for the enlargement and rectification 
of some of our religious ideas, inclusive, and, perhaps, 
above all, of our idea of God ; for these ideas have at 
every epoch of man's history been, more or less, 
modified by contemporary knowledge, and the con- 
temporary conditions of society. These were the 
materials for thought Switzerland supplied. Upon 
all of those, however, which belong to the order of 
human concern, Egypt, too, in its sense and fashion, 
had had something to tell us. 

As to the form and colouring of the work, I could 
have wished that there had been, throughout, sub- 
mitted to the readers attention nothing but the 
scenes described, and the thoughts they gave rise to, 
without any suggestion, had that been possible, of 
the writer's personality. In a work of this kind a 
vain wish : for in all books, those only excepted that 
are simply scientific, and in the highest degree in 



PREFACE 



IX 



those that deal with matter, in which human interests 
preponderate, the personality of the writer must be 
seen in everything he writes. All that he describes 
is described as he saw and observed it. Others 
would have observed things differently. So, too, 
with what he thought about them ; it must be dif- 
ferent from what others would have thought A 
book of this kind tnust, therefore, be, to a great 
extent,, a fragment of autobiography, in which, for the 
time, the inner is seen in its immediate relation to the 
external life of the author. It gives what he felt and 
thought ; his leanings, and likings, and wishes ; his 
readings of the past and of the present ; and his 
mental moorings. This — and especially is it so on a 
subject with which everyone is familiar, though it may 
be one that can never be worn out — is all he properly 
has to say. And his having something of this kind 
to say, is his only justification for saying anything at 
all. The expectation, too, of finding that he has 
treated matters a little in this way is, in no small 
degree, what induces people to give a hearing to 
what he says. They take up his book just because 
they have reason for supposing that he has regarded 
things from his own point of view, and so seen them 
from a side, and in a light, and in relations to 



X 



PREFACE 



connected subjects, somewhat different from those in 
which other people, themselves included, may have 
seen them ; and that he has, therefore, taken into his 
considerations - and estimates some particulars they 
must have omitted in theirs. Whether his ideas are 
to the purpose, whether they will hold water, whether 
they will work, the reader will decide for himself. 
But in whatever way these questions may be answered, 
one particular, at all events, is certain, a book of this 
kind must be worthless, if it is not in some sort auto- 
biographical ; while, if it is, it may, possibly, be worth 
looking over. On no occasion, therefore, have I hesi- 
tated to set down just w r hat I thought and felt, being 
quite sure that this is what every reasonable reader 
wishes every writer to do. 

One more preliminary note. I was accompanied 
by my wife and stepson, the little boy just now r men- 
tioned, who was between nine and ten years of age. 
Switzerland was not new ground to any one of 
the three. Occasionally a carriage was used. When 
that w r as not done I always walked. My wife was on 
foot for about half the distance travelled over. The 
little boy, when a carriage w r as not used, almost 
always rode. I give these particulars in order that 



PREFACE 



XI 



any family party, that might be disposed to extract 
from the following pages a route for a single excursion, 
might understand what they could do, and in what 
time and way it could be done. The August and 
September of the excursion were those of last year, 

1872. 

F. B. Z, 

Wherstead Vicarage : 

January 16, 1873. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

To Zermatt . , i 



CHAPTER II 

The Riff el — The Gorner Grat — Sunday— Zermatt — 
Schwarz See—Mo mitaijze erin^ . . . » .it 

CHAPTER III. 

Walk back to St. Niklaus— Agriculture — Life— Religion in 
the Valley . . / I I — ; — , ^^7^ — " , 21 



CHAPTER IV. 

I. Peasant-proprietorship in the Valley-=-li. Landlordism 
—in. The Era of Capital — IV. Obstructions to the free 
Interaction of Capital and Land — Their Effects and 
probable Removal — v. Co-operative Farming not a Step 
forward . . • . . , . . . . . 2I 



xiv CONTENTS 



CHAPTER V. 

PAGE 

Walk to Saas im Grund—Fee, and its Glacier — The 
Mattmark See . . . . . ^ *% . .113 



CHAPTER VI. 

Walk over Monte Moro to Macugnaga, Po7zte Grande, and 
Do?no d^Ossola c „ . . • . . .122 



CHAPTER VII. 
Walk over the Simplon . . . . «, 0 .131 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Brieg — Upper Rhone Valley by Char to the Rhone Glacier 
—Hotel du Glacier du Rhone .... : . 140 

CHAPTER IX. 

Walk over the Grimsel, by the Aar Valley, Helle Platte, 
a?id the Falls of Handeck, to Meiringen . . . .149 



CHAPTER X. 

Char to Interlaken — Walk over the Wengern Alp to Grin- 
delwald ""~T" "~r~'"~~T ^ . .155 

CHAPTER XL 

Interlaken — Char up the Valley of the Kander— Walk over 
the Gemmi, sleeping at Schwarenbach . . . .163 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER XII. 



Leukabad—Aigle 172 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Drama of the Mountains 184 

CHAPTER XIV. 

On Swiss Hotels 1 94 

K CHAPTER XV. 



Berne — Swiss Fountains — Zurich — Museum of Relics from 
ancient Lake-villages — Baur en ville — Recolte des Voya- 



geurs — Oest un ftauvre Pays 205 

CHAPTER XVI. 
A Remark on Swiss Education . . . . 0 .218 

. CHAPTER XVII. 

Els ass — Lothringen — Metz ■ — Grave lotte — Mother of the 
Cure of St e. Marie aux Chines — Waterloo . . .230 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

How the Observation and Knowledge of Nature, a7id the 
Conditions of Society ' 9 affect Religion and Theology — An 
instructive Parallelism — Conclusion ■ . . . .250 

INDEX . . . . . . . . . .265 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



CHAPTER I. 

TO ZERMATT 

What blessings Thy free bounty gives 

Let me not cast away ; 
For God is paid when man receives : 

T' enjoy is to obey. — Pope. 

August 26. — We left London at 8.45 P.M., and 
reached Paris the next morning at 7 A.M. We found 
the Capua of the modern world looking much as it used 
to look in the days that preceded the siege and the 
Commune. The shops were decked, and the streets 
were peopled, much in the old style. If, as we are 
told, frivolity, somewhat tinctured with, or, at all 
events, tolerant of, vice, together with want of solidity 
and dignity of character, are as conspicuous as of 
yore in the Parisian, we may reply that if they were 
there before, they must be there still ; for a people 
can no more change on a sudden the complexion of 
a B 



2 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



their thoughts and feelings than they can the com- 
plexion of their faces. These matters are in the 
grain, and are traditional and hereditary. The 
severity of taxation France will have to submit to 
may, when it shall have made itself felt, have some 
sobering effect, whereas the bribery and corruption of 
the Imperial regime only acted in the contrary direc- 
tion. But time is needed for enabling this to become 
a cause of change ; and much may arise, at any 
moment, in the volcanic soil of France, to disturb 
its action. All that we can observe at present is, 
that the people seem still quite unconscious of the 
causes of their great catastrophe. Their talk, when 
it refers to late events, is of treason and of revenge ; 
as if they had been betrayed by anything but their 
own ignorance, arrogance, and corruption ; and as if 
revenge, to be secured, had only to be desired. In 
such talk, if it indicates what is really thought and 
felt, there is scant ground for hope. 

August 27 — We left Paris this evening at eight 
o'clock, taking the route of Dijon and Pontarlier. 
The sun was up when we reached Switzerland at 
Verrieres. There was no gradation in the scenery : 
as soon as we were on Swiss ground it- became Swiss 
in character — mountainous and rocky, with irrigated 
meadows of matchless green in the valley. We were 
sure that the good people in the chalets below could 
not be otherwise than satisfied with the price they 



TO ZERMATT 



3 



were getting for their cheese ; for its quantity, and per- 
haps quality, we were equally sure that the greenness 
of their meadows was a sufficient guarantee. By the 
wayside we saw women with baskets full of wormwood, 
for making absinthe which will be drunk in Paris. 

We breakfasted at Lausanne, and dined and slept 
at Vevey, We had thus got to Switzerland, practi- 
cally, in no time at all, and without any fatigue, for we 
had been on the way only at night, and both nights 
we had managed to get sleep enough. 

We had come, as it were, on the magical bit of 
carpet of Eastern imagination ; which must have 
been meant for a foreshadowing of that great 
magician, the locomotive, suggested by a yearning 
for the annihilation of long journeys, without roads, 
and with no conveyance better than a camel : though 
a friend of mine, whose fancy ranges freely and widely 
through things in heaven above, and on earth below, 
tells me he believes that that bit of carpet was a dim 
reminiscence of a very advanced state of things in an 
old by-gone world, out of some fragments of the 
wreck of which the existing order of things has slowly 
grown. 

My last hours in London had been spent in dining 
at the club, with a friend, who is one of our greatest 
authorities on sanitary, educational, and social ques- 
tions ; and our talk had been on such subjects. It is 
well to pass as directly as possible, and without tarry- 

B 2 



4 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



ing by the way, from London and Paris, where man, 
his works, and interests are everything, to Switzerland, 
where nature is so impressive. The completeness of 
the contrast heightens the interest felt in each. 

Those who give themselves the trouble, and do you 
the honour, of looking through what you have written, 
become, in some degree, entitled to know all about 
the matter. They are in a sort partners in the con- 
cern. I will therefore at once communicate to all the 
members of the firm that I did not go on this little 
expedition because I felt any of that desire for change 
by which, in these days, all the world appears to 
be driven in Jehu-fashion. I have never felt any 
necessity for this modern nostrum. I do not find 
that either body or mind wears out because I remain 
in one place more than twelve months together. I 
am a great admirer of White of Selborne ; and I hope 
our present Lord Chancellor's new title will lead 
many people to ask what Selborne is famous for; 
which perhaps may be the means of bringing more 
of us to become acquainted with a book which gives 
so charming a picture of a most charming mind that 
it may be read with most soothing delight a score of 
times in one's life (one never tires of a good picture) ; 
and which teaches for these days the very useful 
lesson of how much there is to observe, and interest, 
and to educate a mind, and to give employment to it, 



TO ZERMATT 5 

for a whole life, within the boundaries of one's own 
parish, provided only it be a rural one. 

It is true that I have been in every county of Eng- 
land, and in most counties of Scotland, Ireland, and 
Wales ; and some general acquaintance with his own 
country — which is undoubtedly the most interesting 
country in the world — ought to an Englishman, if 
only for the purpose of subsequent comparison, to be 
the first acquisition of travel ; and also that I have 
made some long journeys beyond the four seas, 
having set foot on each of the four continents ; but I 
can hardly tell how on any one occasion it happened 
that I went. It certainly never was from any wish 
for change. It was only from taking things as they 
came. And so it was with this little excursion. It 
was not in the least my idea, nor w r as it at all of my 
planning. My wife wished to spend the winter in a 
more genial climate than that of East Anglia ; and it 
was thought desirable that her little boy should go to a 
Swiss school, for, at all events, a part of the year, 
until he should be old enough for an English public 
school. And so, having been invited to go, I went. 
My part of the business, with the single exception of 
a little episode we shall come to in its place, was to 
be ready to start and to stop when required, and to 
eat what was set before me ; in short, to take the 
goods a present providence purveyed. I recollect a 
weather-beaten blue-jacket once telling me — on the 



6 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



roof of the York mail, so all that may be changed 
now — that the charm of a sailor's life was that he had 
only to do what he was told, and nothing at all to 
think about. Of this perhaps obsolete nautical kind 
of happiness, we housekeeping, business-bound lands- 
men cannot have much ; but a month of such travel 
comes very near it. And if a man really does want 
change for the body, together with rest for the mind, 
here he has them both in perfection. What a delightful 
oasis would many find such a month in their ordinary 
lives of inadequately discharged, and too inadequately 
appreciated, responsibility ! This little confidence 
will, perhaps, while we are starting, convey to the 
reader a sense of the unreserved and friendly terms 
on which, I hope, we shall travel together. I regret 
that, from the nature of the case, in these confidences 
all the reciprocity must be on one side. 

August 29. — Left Vevey by an early train for 
Sierre. The line passes by Montreux, Villeneuve 
(where it leaves the eastern extremity of the lake of 
Geneva), Aigle, Bex, St. Maurice, Martigny, and 
Sion. At Sierre we took the diligence for Visp. 
This part of the valley of the Rhone is a long delta, 
which in the lapse of ages has been formed by the 
debris brought down by the Rhone, and the lateral 
torrents from the mountains. Much of it is swampy, 
and full of reeds. Some of this, one cannot but sup- 
pose 5 might be made good serviceable land by cutting 



TO ZERMATT 



7 



channels for the water, and raising the surface of the 
land with the materials thus gained. Indian corn 
grows here very luxuriantly. It is a large variety ; 
some of the stems had three cobs. This, the potatoes, 
and the tobacco — of which, or, at all events, of the 
smoke of which, we saw much — in thought connected 
the scene before us with the New World. 

Between Sierre and Visp there are a great many 
large mounds in the valley. The side of these mounds 
which looks up the valley is always rounded. The 
face which looks down the valley, is sometimes rocky 
and precipitous. This difference must be the effect of 
former glacier action, at a time when the whole valley, 
down to Geneva, was the bed of a glacier, which planed 
off and rounded only that side of the mound against 
which it moved and worked. Above Visp the land 
is very poor, consisting chiefly of cretaceous detrital 
matter. This is covered with a pine forest, a great 
part of which is composed of Scotch fir, the old ones 
being frequently decorated with tufts of mistletoe. 

Geologists are now pretty well agreed that the 
lake of Geneva itself was excavated by this old gla- 
cier. Its power, at all events, was adequate to the 
task. It was 100 miles long, and near 4,000 feet in 
thickness at the head of the lake, as can now be seen 
by the striated markings it left on the overhanging 
mountains. It acted both as a rasp — its under side 
being set with teeth, formed of the rocks it had picked 



8 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



up on its way, or which had fallen into it through its 
crevasses ; and also as a scoop, pushing before it all 
that it could thrust out of its way. And what could 
not such a tool rasp away and scoop out, at a point 
w r here its rasping and scooping were brought into play, 
as it slid along, thicker than Snowdon is high above 
the sea, and impelled by the pressure of the 100 
miles of descending glacier behind, that then filled 
the whole broad valley up to and beyond Oberwald ? 
It was wasting away as it approached the site of the 
modern city, where it must have quite come to an 
end ; for the lake here shoals to nothing ; there could, 
therefore, have, then, been no more rasping and 
scooping. At the head of the lake, where the glacier- 
tool was tilted into the position for rasping and 
scooping vigorously, the water, notwithstanding subse- 
quent detrital depositions, is 900 feet deep. 

At Visp my wife and the little boy got on horseback. 
Another horse was engaged for the baggage. I pro- 
ceeded on foot. Our destination was Zermatt. We 
got under weigh at 2 P.M., and reached St. Niklaus at 
545 ; about twelve miles of easy walking. The situa- 
tion of this place is good, for the valley is here narrow, 
and the mountains, particularly on the western side, 
rise abruptly. The inn also is good. I note this 
from a sense of justice, deepened by a sense of 
gratitude ; because here an effort, rare in Swiss 
hotels, has been made to exclude stenches from the 



I 

TO ZERMATT 



9 



house ; the plan adopted being that of a kind of ex- 
ternal Amy Robsart gallery. From Visp to St. Nik- 
laus the road is passable only for horses. 

August 30, — -My wife and the little boy took a char 
for Zermatt, which also carried the baggage. I was 
on foot. The distance is about fourteen or fifteen 
miles, slightly up hill all the way. The road is good 
and smooth. I must now begin to mention the con- 
spicuous objects seen by the way. At Randa, in the 
Bies Glacier, which is that of the Weisshorn, we saw 
our first ice, This glacier descends so precipitously 
from the mountains, on the right of the road, that you 
can hardly understand how its enormous weight is 
supported. There are, however, on record some in- 
stances of its having fallen ; and it is also on record 
that on one of these occasions the blast of wind caused 
by the fall of such a mass, was so great as to launch 
the timbers of houses it overthrew to the distance of 
a mile ; but I would not back the truth of the record. 

After an early dinner at Zermatt, my wife and my- 
self walked to the foot of the Gorner Glacier, to see the 
exit from it of the Visp. It issues from a most regu- 
larly arched aperture. This is the glacier that de- 
scends from the northern and western sides of Monte 
Rosa, the sides of the Breithorn, and one side of the 
mighty Matterhorn. 

We found the hotels at Zermatt overcrowded. 
This is a great rendezvous for those who do peaks 



A' MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



and passes. In the evening, particularly if it is cold 
enough for a fire, the social cigar brings many of 
them together in the smoking-room. Among these, 
at the time we were there, w r as the hero of the season. 
He is a strong, wiry man, full of quiet determination. 
He was then doing, so ran the talk of the hotel, a 
mountain a day, and each in a shorter time than it 
had ever been done in before. To-morrow he is to 
climb the Matterhorn in continuous ascent from 
this place, in which fashion I understand no one has 
yet attempted it. 



THE RIFFEL 



i r 



CHAPTER II. 

THE RIFFEL — THE GORNER GRAT — SUNDAY — ZERMATT — 
SCHWARTZ SEE — MOUNTAINEERING 

Not vainly did the early Persian make 

His altar the high places, and the peak 

Of earth-o'ergazing mountains ; and thus take 

A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek 

The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak, 

Uprear'd of human hands. — Byron. 

August 31. — After breakfast my wife and I walked 
up to the Riffel Hotel. It is rather more than 3,000 
feet above Zermatt. The little man rode. We were 
two hours and a half in doing it. It would be a stiff 
bit for beginners. The upper part of the forest, on 
the mountain-side, consists of Pinus Cembra. This is 
far from being either a lofty or a spreading tree. The 
lower branches extend but little beyond the upper 
ones. There is a good deal of reddish-brown in the 
bark. In this respect, as well as in the colour of its 
foliage, and in its form, it contrasts well with the larch 
and the spruce, though of course not so well with the 
Scotch fir. I heard that its timber is very lasting. 



12 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



The views, from the forest, of the Gorner glacier, and, 
when you are beyond the forest, of some of the 
neighbouring mountains, and of the valley of Zermatt, 
are good. 

After luncheon at the Riffel Hotel, we walked to 
the summit of the Gorner Grat. Here you have what 
is said to be the finest Alpine view in Europe. You 
are standing on a central eminence of rock in, as far 
as you can see, a surrounding world of ice and snow. 
On the left is the Cima di Jazi, which you are told 
commands a good view into Italy. Just before you, 
as you look across the glacier, which lies in a deep 
broad ravine at your feet, rise the jagged summits of 
Monte Rosa with, at this season, much of the black 
rock showing through their caps and robes of snow. 
Next the Lyskamm, somewhat in the background ; 
then Castor and Pollux, immaculate snow without 
protruding rock ; next the Breithorn, then the naked 
gneiss of the Matterhorn, a prince among peaks, 
too precipitous for snow to rest on in the late summer, 
looking like a Titanic Lycian tomb, such as you may 
see in the plates of 6 Fellowes's Asia Minor/ placed on 
the top of a Titanic rectangular shaft of rock, five 
thousand feet high. Beyond, and completing the circle 
of the panorama, come the Dent Blanche, the Gabel- 
horn, the Rothhorn, the Weisshorn, over the valley 
of Zermatt, the Ober Rothhorn, and the Allaleinhorn, 
which brings your eye round again to the Cima di 



THE GORNER GRAT. 



13 



Jazi. What a scene ! what grandeur for the eye ! 
what forces and masses beneath for the thought ! 
Here is the complement to Johnson's Charing Cross 
and the East Anglican turnip-field. Both pleasant 
sights in their respective classes, but not enough of all 
that this world has to show. 

The little boy in the morning, during our ascent of 
the Riffel, had not been able, when he dismounted, to 
take a dozen steps without resting, as it appeared 
both from having outgrown his strength, and from 
some difficulty in breathing ; but in the afternoon 
he skipped up to the top of the Gorner Grat, an hour 
and a half, and ran down again, just as if he had been 
bred on the mountains. It was difficult to keep him 
on the path, and from the edges of the precipices. 
He was at the top some minutes before any of us — 
we were a large party, for several parties had drawn 
together in the ascent. I heard a lady exclaim, 
' There is the blue boy again ' (that was the colour of 
his blouse). ' He has beaten us all.' Never was 
there such a difference before between a morning 
and an afternoon. 

As we descended the Gorner Grat a scud of snow 
passed by.' The antithesis, common in the mountains, 
of gloom to sunshine, and of cold to warmth, was as 
complete as it was sudden. In a few minutes it was 
bright and warm again. 

While we were at the hotel two American lads 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



came up with their guides, and, after a rest of ten 
minutes, started for some pass. They had nothing 
on but coarse grey woollen pants, shirts of the same 
without collars, and boots very heavily nailed, or 
rather spiked. They were not more than seventeen 
years old, if so much. 

The Riffelberg abounds in beautiful flowers ; Gen- 
tians, Sedums, and Saxifrages reach almost to the top 
of the Gorner Grat. As might be expected at such a 
height, none rise, at their best, more than an inch 
or two above the ground. Gorgeous lilies and lovely 
roses would be as much out of keeping, as impossible, 
here. Such objects belong to the sensuous valley. 

September I. — There was a sharp frost this morning, 
but the sun was bright and warm all day. So warm 
was it at ten o'clock, that people were glad to sit 
about on the grass, some preferring the shade of the 
rocks. It was Sunday, and I was requested to 
conduct divine service. The reading saloon was pre- 
pared for the purpose. I shortened the service by 
omitting the first lesson, the Te Deum, and the Litany. 
Before commencing, I announced to the congregation 
that I should do this, giving as my reason that the 
room did not belong exclusively to us, and therefore 
that it was better to act upon our knowledge of this, 
than to be reminded of it afterwards by those who 
had withdrawn that we might hold our service. I 
had been called upon to conduct the service only a 



SUNDA Y 



15 



few minutes before it commenced, and as I had no 
memoranda for sermons with me, I took for my text 
the scene around us, and spoke of the effects such 
scenes, and the contemplation of nature generally, 
appear to have on men's minds, The knowledge 
men now have of the solar system, and of the sidereal 
universe, does not prevent the heavens from discours- 
ing to us as eloquently as they did to the Psalmist, 
Intelligible law is grander and more satisfactory for 
thought to rest upon than vague impressions of 
glorious power. So with the great and deep sea 
also, now that we know something about the place it 
occupies in the economy of this terrestrial system. It 
is the same with the everlasting mountains, since we 
have come to know something about the way in which 
they were formed and elevated, and how the valleys 
were cut out. Man is the child of Nature, in whose 
bosom he is brought up. It is true that there are 
some who cannot see that it is his duty and his happi- 
ness to acquaint himself with nature ; but no one 
who had made any progress in the study of nature,, 
ever thought lightly of what he had attained to. And 
this is true of the knowledge, not only of the grander 
objects of nature, such as the starry firmament and 
the great and deep sea, but equally of the most in- 
conspicuous, and, as they appear to our senses, the 
most insignificant objects in nature. It is not more 
true of the eternal mountains than of the particles of 



16 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

moss that hide themselves in the crevices of the rock, 
or the lichen that stains its face, &c, &c. 

In the afternoon we walked back to Zermatt 
Though every effort was being made at Zermatt to 
prevent people from going up to the Riffel without 
tickets assuring them of accommodation at the Riffel 
Hotel, still, so many, in their impatience, set this regu-. 
lation at defiance, and went up on the chance that they 
would be allowed six feet by three somewhere, that 
night after night, as we were told, the authorities were 
obliged — perhaps it was a necessity which was ac- 
cepted not unwillingly — to convert the bureau, the 
salle-a-manger, and the reading-room, into dormitories. 
At all events, we were turned out of the reading-room 
before ten o'clock to make way for a pile of mattresses 
we found at the door, ready to be substituted for the 
chairs and tables we had been using. To be berthed 
in this way is far from pleasant ; but it is not worse 
than spending the night in the crowded cabin of a 
small steamer, or in the hermetically-closed compart- 
ment of a railway carriage, with five other pro- 
miscuous bodies. 

September 2. — Started this morning for the Sclrwartz 
See and Hornli. We were all mounted — it was the 
only time I was during the excursion. In ascending 
the mountain, when we were above the pine-wood, 
and so in a place where there was no protection, and 
where the zigzags were short and precipitous, both 



THE SCHWARTZ SEE 



17 



the hind legs of the little boy's horse slipped off the 
path. The animal was so old, and worn-out, and 
dead-beaten with its daily drudgery, that it had 
appeared to us not to care, hardly to know, whether 
it was dead or alive. But now it made an effort to 
recover itself, with the power or disposition for mak- 
ing which we should not, beforehand, have credited it. 
Perhaps the centre of gravity in the poor brute was 
never actually outside the path. I w r as close behind, 
and saw the slip and scramble. It was an affair of a few 
seconds, but it made one feel badly for more minutes. 

At the Schwartz See, we sent the horses to the 
foot of the Zmutt glacier, and began the ascent of 
the Hornli. In about a quarter of an hour we made 
the discovery that the blue boy was not man enough 
for the Hornli. I do not know, however, that we 
should have seen much more if we had gone to the 
top. We were close to the mighty Matterhorn, of 
which the Hornli is a buttress, and at our feet was the 
great Gorner glacier. These were the two great 
objects, and neither of them would have been seen so 
well had we been higher up. In returning we went 
by the way of the Zmutt glacier, a w r ild scene of 
Alpine desolation. There is much variety, and much 
that interests in this excursion ; the cultivated valley, 
the junction of the Findelen and the Zmutt with the 
Visp, the wooded and then the naked mountain, the 
two great glaciers, the sedgy, flowery turf above 

c 



i8 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



the wood, the little black tarn, the bare rock of the 
Hornli, and, over all, the shaft of the Matterhorn. 
On the ridge above the Schwartz See we found a 
handsome blue pansy. Somewhere else I saw a yellow 
one of almost equal size. 

Our guide, Victor Furrer, speaks English well. 
He wished to come to England for the seven winter 
months, thinking that he could take the place of 
under-gardener or stableman in a gentleman's house, 
or that of porter in a London hotel. Swiss education 
disposes the people to look for openings for advanc- 
ing themselves in life beyond the narrow limits of 
their own country, and qualifies them for entering 
them. 

The number of peak-climbers and pass-men as- 
sembled at Zermatt had increased during our short 
absence. Among the latter was an Irish judge, who 
did the St. Theodule. The law was in great force 
here, as was also the Church. The gentleman who 
had attempted the Matterhorn on Saturday, had been 
driven off by the weather. Though fine down here, 
it had been windy, wet, and frosty up there ; and to 
such a degree that the face of this Alpine pier, for it 
is more of that than of a mountain, had become 
glazed with a film of ice. To-day he again attempted 
it from this place ; and, the weather having been all 
that could be desired, he had gone, and climbed, and 
conquered. He found the air so calm on the summit 



MO UNTA INEERING 



19 



that he had no occasion to protect the match with 
which he lighted his cigar ; and, if he had had a 
candle, he would have left it lighted for the people at 
the Riffel to look at through their telescopes. 

Notwithstanding the argument which may be 
founded on the graves (one a cenotaph) of the four 
Englishmen in the God's acre of the Catholic church of 
Zermatt, one cannot but sympathise with the triumph, 
and applaud the pluck and endurance of our moun- 
taineering countrymen. It must be satisfactory, very 
satisfactory indeed, for a man to find that he has such 
undeniable evidence that he is sound in wind and limb, 
and, too, with a heart and head to match ; and that he 
can go anywhere and do anything, for which these by 
no means insignificant qualifications are indispensable. 
Mountaineering, in its motives, to a great extent re- \ 
sembles hunting, and, where there is a difference, the I 
difference is, I think, to its advantage. It is more y 
varied, more continuously exciting, more appreciated / 
by those who do not participate in it, and, which is a 
great point, more entirely personal, for your horse 
does not share the credit with you. Shooting and V 
fishing can bear no comparison with it. The pluck, 
endurance, and manliness it requires are not needed 
by them. It is also a great merit that it is within 
the reach of those who have not been born to hunting, \ 
fishing, and shooting, and will never have the means 

of paying for them. All these pursuits have each 

c 2 



20 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



its own literature ; and, as the general public appears 
to take most interest in that of the mountaineers, there 
is in this, as far as it goes, reason for supposing that 
the pursuit itself is of all. of them the most rational 
and stirring. 

Alpinism is also a natural and healthy protest in 
some, whose minds and bodies are young and vigorous, 
against the dull drawing-room routine of modern 
luxury ; and in others against the equally dull desk- 
drudgery of semi-intellectual work, to which so many 
are tied down in this era of great cities. It is for a 
time a thorough escape from it. It is the best form 
of athleticism, which has its roots in the same causes ; 
and it is, besides, a great deal which athleticism is 
not 

To a bystander there is something amusing in 
the quiet earnestness with which a peak-climber dis- 
cusses the possibilities of an ascent he is contem- 
plating. I was with two this afternoon who were 
about to attempt a mountain by a side on which it 
had not yet been scaled. The difficulty was what 
had hitherto been regarded as pretty much of a sheer 
precipice of some hundreds of feet. One of the two, 
how r ever, had examined it carefully with his glass, and 
had come to think that there was roughness enough on 
its face for their purpose. The guides who were present 
were of the opposite opinion. That it had never been 
ascended on that side, but might perhaps prove not 
unascendable, was the attraction. 



CHAPTER XIL 



WALK BACK TO ST. NIKLAUS — AGRICULTURE — LIFE- 
RELIGION JN THE VALLEY 

Whate'er men do, or wish, or fear ; their griefs 
Distractions, joys. — Juvenal. 

September 3. — Left Zermatt at 2 p.m. on foot 
Walked briskly, but did not get to St. Niklaus till 
near 6 o'clock. All the way down hill. In coming 
up was only a quarter of an hour longer ; this I can't 
understand. A very warm day. Those who went in 
chars, as did my wife and the blue boy, appeared to 
suffer more from the heat than I did who was walk- 
ing. 

In my four hours' walk, having been so lately over 
the same ground, I paid attention to the methods 
and results of cultivation, and endeavoured to make 
out something of the life of the inhabitants of the 
valley. As to the former, it appeared that all the 
cultivated land had been reclaimed by a slow and 
laborious process. The original condition of moun- 
tain valley land is to be more or less covered with 



22 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



rocks and stones, with some soil beneath and be- 
tween. Sometimes the whole surface is completely 
covered with rocky debris, which has been brought 
down, like avalanches, on the occurrence of unusually 
copious torrent floods, which were, in fact, avalanches 
of water and of mountain shingle commingled. The 
first step in the work of reclamation is to get rid of 
the stones. This is either done by removing them 
to a distance, or piling them up in heaps, or burying 
them on the spot. One of these methods will be best 
in one place, and another in another. All the soil 
that can be procured — sometimes there is enough of 
it on the surface, sometimes it has to be mined for in 
a stratum beneath the upper stratum of fragments of 
rock— is then levelled. Of this land, thus laboriously 
made, all that can be irrigated by lateral canals 
brought from the Visp, or diverted from the mountain 
torrents, is laid down to pasture. Canals of this kind 
may often be seen some miles in length. These irri- 
gated pastures are always cut twice, or, where the 
land is deep and good, three times a year. The turf 
is not always composed mainly of different kinds of 
grass. Sometimes it contains more dandelion than 
grass, a great abundance of autumn crocus, of a kind of 
geranium with a purple flower as large as a florin, and 
of other herbaceous plants. Where there is much dan- 
delion the hay, while making, has a sickly smell, but 
vvhen fully made its scent is generally good. The re- 



LIFE IN THE VALLEY 



23 



claimed land, which cannot be irrigated, is used for 
rye, wheat, barley, and potatoes. A well-to-do 
family has two or three patches, about a third of an 
acre each, of this grain land. They will have also two 
or three cows. The mountain forest, and the moun- 
tain pastures are held in common for the equal use 
and benefit of all the inhabitants of the village. 

As to the people themselves, the most prominent 
facts are that they all work hard, and that their hard 
work does not give them more than a bare sufficiency for 
the most necessary wants. I suppose that nowhere 
else in the civilised world is there so little buying and 
selling, and so little interchange of commodities, as in 
a Swiss Alpine valley. The rule is for every family 
to be self-contained, as far as this is possible, in all 
things, and to produce for itself everything it can of 
what it will require in the twelve months. Their 
cows supply them with milk and cheese ; the surplus 
of the latter being the medium through which they 
procure from the outside world what they cannot 
produce for themselves : but that does not come to 
much. It is interesting to see their sheaves of corn 
stored away in the galleries beneath the projecting 
eaves of their houses, and their haricots strung up in 
the sun to dry. This makes you think how carefully 
these provisions will be used in the winter and spring. 
And you see the flax and the hemp, of which they 
grow a great deal, spread out on the grass, to prepare 



24 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

it for scutching ; from which, and from the wool of the 
small flocks of the neighbourhood, they make at home 
much of the materials for their clothes. From their 
apples, of which they grow great quantities, they 
make a kind of brandy. Their lives are a never- 
failing discipline, notwithstanding the brandy, of in- 
dustry, patience, and forethought. In imagination 
you enter the chalet, and sympathise with the cares, 
the troubles, the frugality, the modest enjoyments of 
its inmates. The result of all does not go much beyond 
daily bread. You hope that the harvest has been 
good, and that the cows are doing well. The boys 
you have seen are sturdy little fellows. You hope 
that the girls will not be goitred, and that the sturdy 
little fellows will in time make them good husbands. 
They, you are sure, will make industrious, frugal, 
uncomplaining wives. 

We heard at Zermatt, and our guide told us thafc 
what we had heard was true, that the inhabitants ofl 
the valley pass some of their time in winter in playing I 
at cards ; the stake they play for being each other's 
prayers. Those who lose are bound by the rules of 
the game to go to the village church the following 
morning, and there pray for the souls of those who 
win. The priest also is supposed to have an advan- J 
tage in this practice, as it gives him a larger con-/ 
gregation. / 
Religion — the reader will decide for himself whe- 



RELIGION IN THE VALLEY 



25 



ther or no what has just been mentioned promotes it 
— holds a large place in the life of these Alpine 
valleys. The priest is the great man of the village, 
and has great power. The influx of travellers has a 
tendency to lessen this power, for it enriches inn- 
keepers and guides, and so renders them independent. 
Formerly the village church was the only conspicuous 
building ; the only one that rose above the low level 
of the chalets. This symbolised the relation of its 
minister to the inhabitants of the chalets. Now the 
church is dwarfed in comparison with the contiguous 
hotel. Changes in the world outside have caused a 
new power to spring up, and take its place in the 
scene. Be this, however, as it may, one cannot but 
see that the services and fetes of the Church, supply 
the hard monotonous lives of the people with 
some ideas and interest. Even the authority the 
Church claims, while it has a tendency to overpower, 
has also a tendency to stir their minds a little. The 
prominence of the material fabric of the church in 
the village led me to reflect on what would be the 
result in the minds of the people if it were otherwise. 
In that case they w r ould probably lose the idea of 
union with other times, and with the great outside 
world, and the little elevation of thought and feeling 
beyond the round of their low daily cares, which that 
idea brings with it. The Church may to them be an 
intellectual tyranny, and much that it teaches may 



26 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



be debasing and false, still it appears to have some 
counterbalancing advantages. Our system may have 
more of truth and of manliness, but it would, at pre- 
sent, be unintelligible to them, or if intelligible, re- 
pulsive. Their system, however, is one which, under 
the circumstances of the times, cannot last. It is 
even now on the road to the limbo of things that 
have had their day. In Catholic countries, as far as 
the educated classes and the inhabitants of all the 
large cities are concerned, its power is gone, or still 
more than that, it is actively disliked. This settles 
the question. The time will arrive when, as know- 
ledge and light spread, the village people will come 
round to the way of thinking of the educated classes 
and of the inhabitants of the cities. In this matter 
history is repeating itself. At its first establishment 
Christianity spread from the cities to the pagans, that 
is to the inhabitants of the villages. And so will it 
be again, at the rehabilitation of religion in those 
countries that are now forsaking Romanism. A re- 
vised and enlarged organisation of knowledge must 
be first accepted by those who can think and judge. 
It is then passed on to those who cannot. 

Such valleys as this of Zermatt have hitherto 
offered no opportunities to any portion of their inhabi- 
tants to emerge from a low condition of life. Little 
that could elevate or embellish life was within their 
reach. The only property has been land, and that, 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE 



from the working of inevitable natural causes, has 
been divided into very small holdings. This has 
kept every family poor. Railways, which connect 
them with the world, the influx of travellers, in many 
places a better harvest than that of their fields, the 
advance of the rest of the world around them, and 
the capacity there is in their streams for moving 
machinery, may be now opening new careers to many. 
It is unreasonable to regret the advent of such a 
change, for it has more than a material side ; it 
must bring with it, morally and intellectually, a higher 
and richer life. It implies expansion of mind, and 
moral growth — new fields of thought, and of duty. 



28 



CHAPTER IV. 

L PEASANT-PROPRIETORSHIP IN THE VALLEY. II. LAND- 
LORDISM. III. THE ERA OF CAPITAL. IV. OBSTRUC- 
TIONS TO THE FREE INTERACTION OF CAPITAL AND LAND 
■ — THEIR EFFECTS, AND PROBABLE REMOVAL. V. CO- 
OPERATIVE FARMING NOT A STEP FORWARDS 

But what said Jaques ? 
Did he not moralise the spectacle? — Shakespeare. 

This chapter is to be a disquisition, after the manner 
of the philosophers, at all events, in its length, on 
peasant-proprietorship as now existing in the valley of 
Zermatt, or rather of the Visp ; and on alternative 
systems, I do not invite anyone to read it, indeed, 
I at once announce its contents and its length, for the 
very purpose of inducing those who have no liking for 
disquisitions in general, or for disquisitions on such 
subjects, to skip it, and to proceed to the next 
chapter, where they will find the continuation of the 
narrative of our little excursion. My primary object 
in writing it was to ascertain, through the test of 
black and white, whether what I had been led to 
think upon these matters possessed sufficient cohe- 



PEASANT-PROPRIETORSHIP IN THE VALLEY 29 



rence. I now, with the diffidence one must feel who 
ventures upon such ground, submit it to the judgment 
of those who take some interest in questions of this 
kind, 

Bearing in mind that the subject is not a lively- 
one, I will endeavour so to put what I have to say as 
that not much effort may be required to understand 
my meaning. From all effort, however, I cannot 
exempt the reader of the chapter, should it find one ; 
for he will have, as he goes along, to determine for 
himself whether the facts alleged are the facts of the 
case, whether any material ones have been overlooked, 
and whether the inferences are drawn from the facts 
legitimately. He will not be in a position to allow 
what is presented to him to pass unquestioned ; for 
he will be, himself, the counsel on the other side, as 
well as the jury, 

I. The figures I am about to use do not pretend to 
accuracy, or even to any close approximation to 
accuracy. Some figures, but what figures is of no 
great consequence, are necessary for the form of the 
argument, and for rendering it intelligible. If they 
possessed the most precise accuracy that would not 
at all strengthen it. Those I employ, I retain merely 
because they were the symbols with which, in my two 
walks through the valley, I endeavoured to work out 
the inquiry. 



3o A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

Suppose, then, that the valley of the Visp contains 
4,000 acres of irrigated meadow and of corn and 
garden ground ; and that each family is composed of 
husband and wife, and of not quite four children. 
The average here in England is, I believe, four and a 
half children to a marriage. Marriages, probably, 
take place at a later period of life in the valley than 
in this country, and, therefore, the average number of 
children there will be smaller. Let, then, the grand- 
fathers and grandmothers who may be living, and the 
unmarried people there may be, bring up the average 
of each family to six souls. 

We will now suppose that the husband will require 
a pound and a half of bread a day, that will be about 
nine bushels of wheat a year ; and that the wife and 
children will require each a pound a day ; that will be 
about thirty bushels more, or thirty-nine bushels in all. 
From what I saw of the land in the valley I suppose 
that it will not produce more than twenty-six bushels 
an acre. Whether its produce be wheat, or rye, or 
barley, will make no difference to the argument. An 
acre and a half will then be necessary for the amount 
of bread-stuff that will be required for each family. 

A family, we will take a well-to-do one, will also 
require three cows. Deducting the time the cows are 
on the common pasture on the mountains, each cow 
will require, for the rest of the year, two tons of hay. 
That may be the produce of one acre of their grass- 



PEASANT-PROPRIETORSHIP IN THE VALLEY 31 



land, for some of it is cut three times a year, but 
most of it only twice, the second and third crops 
being light. 

They will not want for their own consumption the 
whole of the produce of the three cows. A surplus, 
however, of this produce is necessary, because it is 
from that that they will have the means for purchasing 
the shoes, the tools and implements, and whatever 
else they absolutely need, but cannot produce them- 
selves. The cows will then require three acres. 

But we will suppose that by the use of straw T , and 
by other economies in the keep of their cows, they 
manage to reduce the quantity of hay that w T ould 
otherwise be consumed. This will set free a little of 
their land for flax, hemp, haricots, cabbages, potatoes, 
&c. The three last will go some way towards lessen- 
ing the quantity of bread-stuff they will require. We 
may, therefore, set down the breadth of cultivated 
land needed for the maintenance, according to their 
way of living, of our family of six souls, at four 
acres. 

The 4,000 acres will thus maintain 1,000 families. 
This will give our valley a population of 6,000 souls. 

Here, perhaps, the rigid economist would stop. It 
would be enough for him to have ascertained the 
laws which regulate, under observed circumstances, 
the production and the distribution of wealth. But 
as neither the writer nor the readers of these pages 



32 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

are rigid economists, we will, using these facts only 
as a starting point, proceed to ulterior considerations. 
The question, indeed, which most interests us is not 
one of pure economy, but one which, . though depen- 
dent on economical conditions, is in itself moral and 
intellectual ; and, therefore, we go on to ask what 
kind of life, what kind of men and women, does this 
state of things produce ? 

In such a population, the elements of life are so 
simple, so uniform, and so much on the surface, that 
there will be no difficulty in getting at the answers to 
our questions. There is not a single family that has 
the leisure needed for mental cultivation, or for any 
approximation to the embellishments of life. They each 
have just the amount of land which will enable them, 
with incessant labour, and much care and forethought, 
to keep themselves above absolute want. Subdivision 
might, possibly, in some cases be carried a little 
further, but things would then only become worse. 
Towards this there is always a tendency. But, for 
reasons we shall come to presently, there is no ten- 
dency at all in the other direction. Intellectual life, 
therefore, is impossible in the valley. The conditions 
requisite for it are completely absent. 

With the moral life, however, it is very far from 
being so. Of moral educators, one of the most 
efficient is the possession of property ; the kind of 
education it gives being, of course, dependent on the 



PEASANT-PROPRIETORSHIP IN THE VALLEY 33 



amount and kind of property. For instance : the 
simplicity and gentility of a large fortune in three per 
cent, consols educates its possessor. It does not teach 
him forethought, industry, or self-denial. He may be 
improvident, idle, self-indulgent, and still his means of 
living may not be thereby diminished ; nor will anything 
he can do improve them. Nor, furthermore, will the 
management of his property bring him into such re- 
lations with his fellow men, that, at every step and 
turn, he has to consider their wants and rights, and to 
balance them against his own. Nor will anything 
connected with his property teach him the instability 
of human affairs, for his is just the only human 
possession that is exempt from all risks and changes. 
Now the non-teaching of these moral qualities is an 
education, the outcome of which is likely to be a 
refined selfishness. An equal fortune derived from 
commerce, trade, or manufactures, teaches other 
lessons, almost we may say lessons of the very 
opposite kind. He, whose position depends on buying 
and selling, and producing, and on the human agencies 
he must make use of, on new discoveries, and on a 
variety of natural occurrences, will estimate life and 
his fellow men very differently from his neighbour, 
who has nothing at all to do except receiving, and 
spending his dividends. We are taking no account 
of individual character, and of the thousand circum- 
stances and accidents, which may overrule, in any 

D 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



particular case, the natural teaching of either of these 
two kinds of property : we are only speaking gene- 
rally ; and are taking them as illustrations, with which 
we are all familiar, of a character-forming power every 
kind of property possesses. 

Looking, then, at the property possessed by these 
Visp-side families in the same way, we can readily 
understand the moral effect it will have upon them. 
It will enforce what it teaches with irresistible power, 
because it will be acting on every member of the 
community in precisely the same way, throughout 
every day of the lives of all of them, generation after 
generation. Such teaching there is no possibility of 
withstanding. And what it teaches in this undeniable 
fashion, — undeniable because the virtues taught are 
to them the very conditions of existence, — are very far 
from being small moralities, for they are industry, 
prudence, patience, frugality, honesty. 

Without industry their little plots of land could 
not support them ; not the industry of the Irishman, in 
the days before the potato-famine, who set his potatoes 
in the spring, and took them up in the autumn, with- 
out finding much to do for the rest of the year ; but 
an industry which must be exercised, sometimes 
under very adverse circumstances, throughout the 
whole twelve months. Every square yard of every 
part of their land represents so much hard labour, for 
nowhere has land been so hard to win. This fact is 



PEASANT-PROPRIETORSHIP IN THE VALLEY 35 



always before their eyes, and is in itself always a 
lesson to them. And this hard-won land, reminding 
them of the industry of those who were before them, 
has still, alw T ays, to be protected against the ravages 
of winter storms, and its irrigation kept in order. 
And every hard-won square yard must be turned to 
the best account. And all must labour in doing this. 
Their cows, too, require as much attention as their 
families. For them they must toil unremittingly in 
their short summer : they must follow them up into 
the mountains, and they must collect and store up 
for them the provender they will need in the long 
winter. And they must be industrious not only 
in the field, but equally in the house. They cannot 
afford to buy, and, therefore, everything, that can be, 
must be done, and made, at home. They cannot 
allow any portion of their time, or any capacity their 
land has for producing anything useful, to run to 
waste. There can be no fallows, of any kind, here. 

With their long winters and scanty means, fru- 
gality, prudence, forethought, are all as necessary as 
industry. These are the indispensable conditions for 
eking out the consumption of the modest store of 
necessaries their life-long industry provides. If they 
were as wasteful, as careless, as improvident as our 
wages-supported poor, the ibex and chamois might 
soon return to the valley. 

It is these necessity-imposed virtues which save 

D 2 



36 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



the valley on the one hand from depopulation, and 
on the other from becoming overpeopled. Our la- 
bourers, and artisans, and operatives, who depend on 
wages, as soon as they have got wages enough to 
support a wife, marry. The general, almost the uni- 
versal, rule with them is to marry young. The young 
men and maidens on Visp-side, not being dependent 
on wages, but on having a little bit of land, sufficient to 
support life, do not marry till they have come into 
possession of this little bit of land. Early marriages, 
therefore, are not the rule with them. The discipline 
of life, such as it is in the valley, has taught them — 
and a very valuable lesson it is — to bide their time. 

Another virtue, which comes naturally to them, is 
honesty. The honesty of the valley appears to an 
Englishman unaccountable, Arcadian, fabulous. The 
ripe apples and the ripe plums hang over the road 
without a fence, for land is too precious for fences, 
and within reach of the hand of the passer-by ; but 
no hand is reached out to touch them. Why is such 
forbearance unimaginable here ? The reason is that, 
where only a few possess, the many not having the 
instincts of property, come to regard the property of 
the few as, to some extent, fair game for them. It is 
their only chance — their only hunting-ground. This 
is a way in which, without sanctioning a law which 
will act prejudicially to themselves, they can secure 
their share of the plums and apples nature provides. 



PEASANT-PROPRIETORSHIP IN THE VALLEY 37 



But, when all have property, each sees that the con- 
dition on which his own plums and apples will be 
respected is that he should himself respect the plums 
and apples of other people. This idea is at work in 
everybody's mind. The children take to the idea, 
and to the practice of it, as naturally as they did to 
their mother's milk. Honesty becomes an element 
of the general morality. It is in the air, which all 
must breathe. 

Here then is a picture that is most charming. 
How cruelly hard has Nature been ! Look at the 
cold, heartless mountains. Look upon their ice and 
storm-engendering heights. See how the little valley 
below lies at their mercy. Consider how, year by 
year, they fight against its being extorted from their 
dominion. Yet the feeble community in the valley, 
by their stout hearts and virtuous lives, continue 
to make it smile on the frowning mountains. How 
pleasing to the eye and to the thought, is the 
sight ! And what enhances the charm it possesses is 
the sense of its thorough naturalness. There is 
nothing artificial about it ; and so there is nothing 
that can to the people themselves suggest discontent. 
Their condition, in every particular, is the direct re- 
sult of the unobstructed working of natural causes, 
such as they exist in man himself, and in environing 
circumstances. Whatever may be its drawbacks, or 
insufficiencies, they can in no way be traced to human 



38 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



legislation. How unwilling are we to contrast with 
this charming scene — but this is just what we have to 
do — the destitution, the squalor, and the vice, not 
of our great cities only, but even of our Visp-sides. 

But, first, we will endeavour, by the light of the 
ideas we outside people have on these subjects, to 
complete our estimate of the worth of the state of 
things we are contemplating ; of this oasis, the sight 
of which is so refreshing to those w r hose lot it is to be 
familiar with, and to dwell in, the hard wilderness of 
the world. 

Its virtues are, doubtless, very pleasing to con- 
template ; but they are not of quite the highest order. 
The industry before us is very honourable. The 
mind dwells on the sight of it with satisfaction. But, 
as it only issues in the barest subsistence, the obser- 
vation of this somewhat clouds our satisfaction. There 
are, too, higher forms of industry of which nothing can 
be know r n here — the industry of those who live labori- 
ous days, and scorn delights, from the desire to im- 
prove man's estate, to extort the secrets of nature for 
his benefit, to clear away obstacles which are hin- 
dering men from seeing the truth, to add to the 
intellectual wealth of the race, to smoothe the path of 
virtue, and make virtue itself appear more attractive. 
Such industry is more honourable, and more blessed 
both to him who labours and to those who participate 
in the fruits of his labour. And such prudence, fru- 



PEASANT-PROPRIETORSHIP IN THE VALLEY 39 



gality, and forethought as are practised in the valley 
are very honourable, and the mind dwells on the 
sight of them, too, with satisfaction. But he who 
belongs to the outside world will here again be dis- 
posed to repeat the observation just made. It is true 
that that man's understanding and heart must be out 
of harmony with the conditions of this life, and there- 
fore repulsive to us, who does not gather up the frag- 
ments that nothing be lost, but when this is done only 
for self, and those who are to us as ourselves, though 
so done unavoidably through the necessity of the 
case, it is somewhat chilling and hardening. And it 
is not satisfactory that so much thought and care 
should be expended only upon the best use of the 
means of life — those means, too, being sadly restricted ; 
for a higher application of these virtues would be to 
the best use of life itself. And so, again, with respect 
to their honesty. This is a virtue that is as rare as 
honourable ; and the mind dwells on the sight of it 
with proportionate satisfaction. But its application 
to plums and apples is only its beginning. It has 
far loftier and more arduous, and more highly re- 
warded forms. It may be acted on under difficulties, 
and applied to matters, not dreamt of in the valley. 
It may rise into the form of social and political 
justice, in which form it prompts a man to consider 
the rights of others, especially of the most helpless 
and depressed, and even of the vicious, as well as his 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



own ; and not to use his own advantages and power 
in such a way as to hurt or hinder them : but, rather, 
to consider that it is due to their unhappy circum- 
stances and weakness, that he should so use his power, 
and good fortune, as to contribute to the redress of 
the evils of their ill fortune. 

Attractive, then, as is the contemplation of the 
moral life of the inhabitants of the valley, it is not 
in every respect satisfactory. A higher level may be 
attained. After all, it is the moral life rather of an 
ant-hill, or of a bee-hive, than of this rich and complex 
world to which w r e belong. And even if it were some- 
what more elevated than it is, still there would remain 
some who would be unable to accept it, as worthy of 
being retained without prospect of change or improve- 
ment ; and their reason would be, that man does not 
live by, or for, morality only. The worthy exercise 
of the intellectual powers is necessary for their idea 
of the complete man ; and here everything of this 
kind is found to be sorely deficient. On the whole, 
then, in respect of each of the three ingredients of 
human well-being, a thoroughly equipped life, in- 
tellectual activity, and the highest form of virtue, we 
feel that something better, — with respect, indeed, to the 
two first something very much better, — is attainable, 
than what exists in the charming oasis before us. 



LANDLORDISM 



41 



II. I now invite the reader to proceed with me 
to the consideration of how different economical con- 
ditions, such as our experience enables us to imagine, 
would modify the state of things we have been con- 
templating. For instance, suppose Visp-side were in 
Scotland or England, then its 4,000 acres might, and 
it is not unlikely that they would, be only a part of 
the estate of some great landlord, Let us endeavour 
to make out the effects this would have on its in- 
habitants, 

The most obvious result would be that the popu- 
lation would be diminished by more than a half. 
At present the produce of the valley, with no very 
considerable deductions, is consumed in the valley, 
What is produced is what is required for supplying 
its large population w r ith the first wants of life, But 
this will no longer be the case, The land will be let. 
We will suppose that this change has been completely 
effected ; and that its irrigated meadows, with the 
contiguous little plots of corn-land, have been formed 
into farms, and that all is now treated in the way 
those who rent them find it pays best to manage 
them. We will suppose they have to pay a rent of 
30s. an acre. The rent of the valley will then be 
6,000/. a-year, How will this sum be made up ? 
Cheese, of course, will be the main means. The 
young bullocks and the old cows will come next, 
We will take little credit for corn or potatoes^ 



42 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



because it is evident that not nearly so much of them 
will be grown as was done under the old system ; for 
much of the mountain corn-land will not pay now for 
cultivation with hired labour. 

The economist, pure and simple, may say that 
this is ail right. The course of events must be sub- 
mitted to. Whatever they dictate is best ; and best 
as it is. Interference with natural laws is always 
bad. The cheese and the cattle will sell for as much 
as they are worth. The sovereigns they will fetch 
are worth as much as the produce. There will be no 
diminution of wealth. But, however, it has to be 
proved that the new system is unavoidable in the 
sense of being either a natural step in the unobstruc- 
ted course of human affairs, or, as some would tell 
us, the natural consummation of their long course, 
now at last happily effected. Perhaps it may be 
possible to show that there has been serious inter- 
ference with their natural evolution ; so serious as 
greatly to affect their character. And, if so, then the 
question of whether or no there has been any loss of 
value does not arise, for the antecedent question may 
render its discussion unnecessary. Be, however, these 
matters as they may, they do not cover all the ground 
we are desirous of investigating. We are thinking 
not of exchangeable wealth only, but also of men 
and women ; and they, perhaps, may be regarded as 
wealth in its highest form ; a kind of wealth, in which, 



LANDLORDISM 



43 



if the men and women are not corrupt or counterfeit, 
but good and true, all may to some extent participate, 
and be the better for. 

Under the system we are now considering, it jars 
against a sense of something or other in the minds of 
many, to see so much of the results of the labour of 
the people of the valley passing away from them, 
never to return in any form or degree. As far as 
they are concerned it is a tribute they are paying to 
the man who owns the land of the valley. And 
whether it be, year by year, paid to him, or whether 
all this cheese and all these cattle be every year on a 
stated day collected and burnt at the mouth of the 
valley ; or the price, for which they may have been 
sold, thrown into the mid-ocean, would make no 
difference to them. They will get no advantage 
from it at all, for it is evident that a man who has an 
income of at least 6,000/. a-year will never live in the 
Valley of the Visp. He will, perhaps, have his 
mansion on the bank of the Lake of Geneva; or 
perhaps at Paris : at all events, it will be somewhere 
at a distance. The case of so many bales of calico 
being sent out of Manchester, to all parts of the 
world, is not similar. They are sent out for the very 
purpose of coming back again in the form of what 
will not only support those who produce them, but 
will also, if trade be good, increase the fund that 
supports the trade, that is to say, will increase the 



44 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



number of those who in various ways are supported 
by the trade : hence the growth of Manchester. Nor is 
it the same thing as so many quarters of corn being 
sent from America to this country, for in that case 
also the price of the corn returns to the hands of 
those who grew it. Their corn-fields have produced 
for them, only in a roundabout fashion, a golden har- 
vest ; and they have, themselves, the consumption of 
this harvest, precisely in the same way as the now 
existing Visp-side population have the direct con- 
sumption of the produce of their little plots of land. 
Some, of course, of the price of the cheese and cattle 
sent away will enable the farmers to live and to pay 
their labourers ; but none of the 6,000/. a-year will 
come back in any form. 

But the point now actually before us is the effect 
this change will produce on the amount of popula- 
tion. In order that the land might be let profitably, 
it was necessary to clear it of its old proprietors, for 
they could pay no rent at all Their little estates were 
barely sufficient, with the most unremitting labour, 
and the most careful frugality, to support life. The 
valley has now been formed into cheese-farms ; and 
we will suppose that for keeping up the irrigation, 
cutting the grass, tending the cows in summer on the 
mountains, and during the winter doing everything 
for them, and for cultivating whatever amount of land 
is still cropped with corn and potatoes, five men are 



LANDLORDISM 45 

wanted for a hundred acres. This will give for the 
4,000 acres 200 men. Let each man, as before, re- 
present a family of six souls. Here, for the labourers 
and their families, will be a population of 1,200. We 
will also suppose that, under the circumstances of the 
valley, the average size of the farms is not more than 
fifty acres. This will give eighty farmers. If their 
households average eight souls, we have 640 more. 
These, and the labourers, will not, as w r as formerly 
done, under the old order of things, by every family, 
produce themselves pretty nearly all that is necessary 
for their households. It will not be so, because the 
farmers, who must also attend to their farms, will 
require many things that none required before ; and 
because the labourers, having to give all their time 
and strength for wages, will be obliged to buy almost 
all that they will require. This will necessitate the 
introduction into the valley of a considerable number 
of tradesmen. We will suppose a hamlet every five 
miles, in which, besides farmers and labourers, will 
reside eight tradesmen and petty shopkeepers. That 
is five hamlets, and forty tradesmen and shopkeepers, 
These, with six to a family, will add 240 to the popu- 
lation. These different contributories, then, will raise 
the total to 2,080. As the distances will remain what 
they were, and as there will be more stir and am- 
bition among a population of farmers and shopkeepers, 
than there was formerly among the peasant proprie- 



46 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



tors, we will take the number of school-teachers as 
much the same under either system. The reduction 
of the population to one-third of its former amount 
will somewhat reduce the number of priests ; but as 
thought will now be more active, and, therefore, more 
varied, this reduction will be counterbalanced by an 
increase in the number of prophets. 

The next step in our inquiry is, how will this 
revolution affect the character of the population of 
the valley ? We have seen that under the old system 
their whole character was the direct result of the fact 
that everyone was either the actual, or the prospective, 
possessor of a small plot of land, just enough to sus- 
tain the life of a family. That was the root out of 
which their lives grew ; and their industry, frugality, 
forethought, patience, and honesty were the fruits 
such lives as theirs produced. That root is now dead. 
The conditions of life are different ; and with differ- 
ent conditions have come corresponding differences of 
character. For instance, we all know that those who 
labour primarily for others, that others may make 
the profit that will accrue from their labour, are not so 
industrious as those who labour entirely for them- 
selves. Nor will they have the same forethought, 
because their dependence is on wages, and wages 
require no forethought. Formerly forethought was a 
condition of existence. They are also now in a school 
which is a bad one for frugality and patience, and 



LANDLORDISM 



which is very far from being a good one for honesty. 
These, however, are still the main constituents of 
morality, for in them there can be no change, because 
morality is the regulative order of the family and of 
society : and now, with respect to all of these points, 
among the mass of the population, there is, neces- 
sarily a deterioration. Nor is petty trade, at least so 
says the experience of mankind, favourable to morality. 
As to those who hire the land, we will suppose that 
the more varied relations, than any which existed 
under the old system, into which they have been 
brought with their neighbours, and with the world out- 
side the valley, have in some cases had an elevating 
and improving effect, The moral influences, however,, 
of occupations of this kind are far from being uni- 
versally good, because those who live by the labour 
of others, will in many cases be of opinion, that their 
own interests are antagonistic to the interests of those 
they employ in such a sense, that it is to their ad- 
vantage to pay low wages, which means to lessen the 
comforts, and even the supply of necessaries, to those 
by whose labour they live. This may be an un- 
avoidable incident of the relation in which the two 
stand towards each other, but it is not conducive to 
the result we are now wishing to find. 

The intellectual gains and losses are harder to 
estimate. As to the labourers, one cannot believe 
that a body of men that has been lowered morally 



4 8 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



has been raised intellectually. Among the trades- 
men class there will be some who will have more 
favourable opportunities for rising into a higher in- 
tellectual life than any had among the old peasant- 
proprietors. And among the small occupiers of land, 
for the farms only average fifty acres, these chances 
will, perhaps, be still greater. But all this will not 
come to much. The great question here is about the 
one family, for whose benefit mainly, almost, indeed, 
exclusively, the whole of the change has been brought 
about This family now stands for 4,000 of the old 
inhabitants of the valley. One of the greatest of all 
possible revolutions has been carried out in its favour, 
for it is a revolution that has swept away the greater 
part of the population, and completely altered the 
material, moral, and intellectual life of all that re- 
mained. We will, however, suppose that they are 
everything that can be expected of a family so 
favourably circumstanced. That their morality is 
pure and elevated. That, intellectually, they are re- 
fined and cultivated. That they promote art. That 
science is at times their debtor. That among its mem- 
bers have been men who have advanced the thought 
of their day, and have made additions to the common 
fund of intellectual wealth ; and others who have done 
their country good service in peace and in war. 

When I say that this family stands in the place 
of the 4,000 who have disappeared from the valley, I 



LANDLORDISM 



49 



limit the observation to the valley, for I do not mean that 
the population of the world has been diminished to that 
extent to make space for them, because the cheese 
and cattle sent out of the valley for their 6,000/. 
a-year, will contribute to the support elsewhere of a 
great many people who must work, and so live, in 
order that they may be able to purchase them. 

But to return ; those who were not satisfied with 
the original Arcadian state of things, we may be 
sure will not be satisfied with that which we are now 
imagining has taken its place. For nothing will 
satisfy them, if there must be a change, except some 
such condition of things as will work as favourably 
both for morality, and for intellect, as that did for 
morality alone ; and which will, at the same time, 
provide, generally, a better supplied material life than 
that did. 

We have now endeavoured, first, to analyze the 
land-system of the valley, such as it presents itself to 
the eye of a contemplative pedestrian ; and which may 
be regarded as the natural working out of proprietor- 
ship in land, when it is the sole means of supporting 
life. We then proceeded to compare with this a system 
w 7 e wot of, carried out to its full-blown development. 
This second system is what people refer to when they 
talk of English landlordism. These two forms, how- 
ever, of the distribution and tenure of land are very 
far from exhausting all that have existed, and that 

E 



5o A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



do and that might exist. Distribution and tenure are 
capable of assuming many other forms ; and some of 
these must be considered before we can hope to arrive 
at anything like a right and serviceable understand- 
ing of the matter. 

III. The distinguishing feature of the economical 
conditions of the present day, and of other conditions 
as f^r as they depend on those that are economical, 
is the existence of capital in the forms and propor- 
tions it has now assumed. This has modified, and is 
modifying, the life of all civilised communities. It is 
this that has built our great cities, that is peopling 
the new world, that has liberated the serfs of the 
Russian Empire. It leavens all we do, or say, or 
think. We are what we are, because of it. The 
tenure and distribution of land, next to capital itself, 
the most generally used and diffused of all property, 
originally the only, and till recently the chief, pro- 
perty, cannot escape the influence of this all-pervading 
and omnipotent agent of change, which everywhere 
cuts a channel for itself, and finds the means for 
rising, sooner or later, to its own level. In some 
places it has affected land in a fashion more or less 
in accordance with its natural action ; in other places 
in a fashion which has resulted more or less from 
artificial restrictions : but in some fashion or other it 



THE ERA OF CAPITAL 51 

affects it everywhere ; as it does all man's belongings, 
and the whole tenor and complexion of human life. 

Land, then, was the sole primeval means of sup- 
porting life. Over large areas of the earth's surface 
it is so still. It was so in Homeric Greece — at that 
time the most advanced part of Europe — though we 
can trace in its then condition a certain indefinite 
nebulous capacity for the development of capital, the 
higher means of supporting life ; and which capacity 
afterwards assumed its true form and action among 
the Ionians and other Asiatic Greeks, but above all 
at Athens : which accounts for the differences between 
it and Sparta : for it was the existence and employ- 
ment of capital which made it the nurse and the 
holy city of intellect ; while it w T as the contempt and 
the legislative suppression of capital which kept the 
Lacedaemonians, except so far as they were affected 
by the general influences of Greek thought, in the 
condition of a clan of splendid savages. And w r hat 
obtained all but absolutely in Homeric Greece, 
obtained at that time, as far as we know, quite abso- 
lutely over all the rest of Europe. In the early ages of 
Roman history, Rome was a city of landowners ; that 
is, of landowners living a city life. To understand this 
fact is to understand its early, and much of its subse- 
quent history. It was so, also, with the neighbouring 
cities, in the conquest and absorption of w T hich the 

first centuries of its historic existence were spent : 

E 2 



52 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

they were cities of landowners. As we walk about 
the streets of disinterred Pompeii, we see that in this 
pleasure-city, even down to the late date of its catas- 
trophe, it was very much so, although the capital of 
the plundered world had, at that time, for several 
generations, been flowing, through many channels, 
into Italy. That specimen city, as we may call it, 
of imperial Italy, appears to have been laid up in its 
envelope of ashes, preserved like an anatomical pre- 
paration, for the very purpose of enabling us to under- 
stand this luciferous fact. 

I need not go on tracing out the subsequent his- 
tory of land and capital, which would lead, again, to 
a comparison of the splendid savagery of feudal land- 
owners with the revival of culture in the capital-sup- 
ported trading communities of the Dark Ages ; and 
their interaction upon each other : but will pass at 
once to ourselves. It is very possible now, at all 
events it is conceivable under the present state of 
things, that in a large English city — it is more or less 
so with almost all our cities — there may not be a 
single owner of agricultural land in its whole popula- 
tion : for I now, as I do throughout this chapter, 
distinguish land held for agricultural purposes from 
that which is held merely for residential, or com- 
mercial purposes. Here, then, is a difference so great 
that it takes much time and thought to comprehend 
its extent, its completeness, and its consequences. 



THE ERA OF CAPITAL 



53 



It belongs to a totally different stage of economical, 
and of social development ; as complete as the dif- 
ference between a caterpillar and a butterfly. The 
solid strength, the slow movements, the monotonous 
existence of the former represent the era of land. The 
nimbleness (capital is of no country), the beauty, the 
variety of life, but withal the want of solidity of the 
latter represent the era of capital. It is the wise 
combination, and harmonious interaction, of the two, 
which would, and which are destined to, cancel the 
disadvantages, and secure the advantages of each. 

The revolution, that has been effected, is mighty 
and all-pervading. But because it has not been 
carried out by invading hosts, ravaged provinces, 
blazing cities, and bloody battle-fields, it is difficult to 
bring home to the general understanding that there 
has been any revolution at all. At its commence- 
ment it found those who owned the land of the 
country, not merely the most powerful order in the 
state, but quite supreme. It gradually introduced 
another order of men, those who own capital ; and 
has ended by making them at length the most power- 
ful ; and so much so that now, whenever they choose 
to assert their power, they are supreme. Of course 
there ought not to be any antagonism between the two ; 
but as there is unfortunately, and quite unnecessarily, 
an artificially created antagonism, there must be col- 



54 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



lisions and conflicts ; in which, however, the supremacy 
must always eventually rest with the strongest. 

The progress of this revolution ought to be seen, 
a little in detail. Not an acre can be added to the 
land of the country, but to the capital of the country, 
already several times as much in value as the whole 
of the land, and supporting a greater number of lives, 
there is added a sum of two millions and a half of 
pounds sterling every Saturday night. We will note 
a few of the steps in the growth of capital. The year 
1 5 50 is very far from the date of the recognised ap- 
pearance of capital in this country : it was even ob- 
served that in the previous century there had been 
an unexampled extension of commerce ; but there 
are good reasons for supposing that the whole of the 
accumulated capital of the country at that time was 
less than one year s purchase of the land. The land, 
at all events, was worth a great many times as much 
as all the capital amounted to. 

In 1690 the purchase of an estate, of the value of 
100,000/., was the wonder of the day. 

In the next fifty years bankers were the chief, or 
only, large purchasers. 

In the following half-century the Indians came 
home, and were added to the class. 

Then, in the last half of the last century, came the 
manufacturers. • 

And now the most prominent capitalists, who 



THE ERA OF CAPITAL 



55 



become large purchasers of land, are the coal-owners, 
and the owners of iron-works, who, however, are ac- 
companied by a cloud of contractors, engineers, mer- 
chants, brewers, Stock Exchange speculators, Aus- 
tralians, and even tradesmen, among whom bankers 
and manufacturers still hold their ground. Of course 
all of these classes who might, do not, become pur- 
chasers of agricultural estates ; but those who do, show 
us in what direction we are to look for the great 
money-lords of the day. And if they are so many 
— there probably are at this time in Newcastle alone, 
in consequence, just now, of the prosperity of the 
iron and coal trades, five and twenty houses making, 
each, its 100,000/. a-year, how many must be the rank 
and file of the army of capital. The ratio then of capi- 
tal to land has been completely inverted. At this 
moment there is disposable capital enough in the 
country to buy, at its present enhanced price, all the 
land of the country, three times over. And this stock 
of capital goes on increasing at the rate of 1 50,000,000/. 
a-year. 

In the political order, we are indebted to capital 
for Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone, and for their 
policy ; and we may suppose that the policy which 
capital may dictate will, henceforth, be the policy of 
every Government that will administer the affairs of 
this country. The land and the proletariat will never 
combine for the purpose of attempting to make it 



56 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

otherwise : for it will never be their interest to do so. 
Capital is both aristocratic and democratic in the best 
sense of each of these words. It is the cement, and 
the mainspring of modern societies, and, also, the 
ladder within them, without which there would be no 
rising from low to high positions. 

And now let us go back to Visp-side, bearing in 
mind the ideas we have been working out. We will, 
then, suppose that by trade, and commerce, and manu- 
factures, which are both the children and the parents 
of capital, other means for supporting life have be- 
come abundant in the valley. It is easy to make 
out what will be the effect of this on the dimensions 
of the, at present, diminutive properties of its one 
thousand families. Land will present itself to the 
minds of all as what it has really become; that is to 
say, as only one means among many for the support 
of life : the many others being the various forms in 
which capital works. The present subdivision, there- 
fore, of the land will no longer be regarded as an 
obvious and undeniable necessity. It has, indeed, 
become only a secondary, and inferior means for sup- 
porting life. Those engaged in trade and commerce, 
it will be manifest, are many of them living much 
better lives than the petty proprietors. The old ideas 
and practices, then, with respect to land will melt 
away, and be utterly dissolved. The necessity for 



THE ERA OF CAPITAL 



57 



maintaining them has ceased ; and they will cease to 
be maintained. 

At the same time those who have acquired capital 
by trade, and commerce, and manufactures, will be 
desirous of investing some of it, perhaps a surplus 
their business may not require, in land, which must 
always continue to be the safest, and in some other 
respects the most desirable form of property. And 
many of those who have come to wish to retire from 
the labours and anxieties of business, will have the 
same desire. So, too, will some who are disposed to 
prefer agriculture to other kinds of industry ; and 
who are, therefore, desirous of becoming possessed of 
sufficient land for their purpose, that they may apply- 
to it their capital and intelligence, using it as the raw 
material of the manufacture towards which they are 
most attracted. Some will merely w T ant a pleasant 
situation for a home for their families ; some a little 
land around such a home to give them a little 
pleasant occupation. There will, we will suppose, be 
no artificial, as there are no natural, obstacles to all 
of these people buying what they have the means for 
buying, and the wish to buy ; and using what they 
buy as they please. The properties thus formed will, 
many of them, be large, in proportion to the amount 
of surplus capital many will come to possess. But 
what will be remarkable, in this respect, will be, w\hile 
the number of landed properties will be very con- 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



siderable, the variety of their dimensions, which will 
be proportionate to the endlessly varying means of 
the multitudes, who in an era of capital will be 
desirous of investing in land, and the variety of uses 
to which they will be put in accordance with the 
varying wants and tastes of their owners. 

And in these properties, whether great, or small, 
there will be incessantly at work two directly oppo- 
site tendencies. One in the direction of enlargement 
by inheritance, by marriage, and by larger increases 
of surplus capital, and of capital retiring from busi- 
ness. The other in the direction of subdivision, 
through the necessities, or the wishes, of their holders. 
These necessities may have arisen from the vicissi- 
tudes of business, the occurrences of life, and the 
extravagances and vices of their holders from time 
to time. Or the descendant of a purchaser may wish 
to capitalise his land, and take the capital back to 
business ; or to place it in some investment more 
profitable than land. But, at all events, there will 
be no escaping from the natural, ever-felt, imperious 
obligation proprietors of land, like all other men, 
will be under, of providing for their widows and 
children. This will keep every estate in the condition 
of liability to subdivision ; and must, at intervals, 
subdivide it. All these may be regarded as natural 
conditions. They are self-acting, and never-failing ; 
and that they should lead to their natural issue, that 



THE ERA OF CAPITAL 



59 



is to the subdivision of landed estates, is in accordance 
with good instincts, in no way demoralising, and in 
every way healthy. Their free action exactly ac- 
commodates things to the requirements both of in- 
dividuals and of the times. 

What we are now contemplating is the state of 
things which will be brought about when the natural 
action of capital, and the natural action of landed 
property, have been left to take their own unimpeded 
course in the valley : for it is to the actual and the 
possible conditions of Continental Visp-sides, viewed 
in connection with the actual and the possible condi- 
tions of Continental cities, rather than to the broad 
acres and busy cities of wealthy England, that what 
I am now saying belongs, notwithstanding the appear- 
ance, which is unavoidable, of a constant reference to 
ourselves. Their case is not quite identical with ours, 
either in their existing conditions, or their future 
possibilities, as will be seen in due time and place, 
when we come to the distinct, and separate, con- 
sideration of our own case. Surplus capital, then, 
and capital withdrawn from business, will always be 
seeking investment : and as the land of a country is 
the natural reservoir for a large proportion of all 
such capital ; and as every acre of land is, on our 
supposition, saleable, as much so as a sack of wheat, 
or a horse, though at the moment the owner may not 
be tempted by the price that would be offered for it; 



6o A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



and as much of the land everywhere is always actually 
in the market, and on sale ; the habit of looking to 
land as the safest both of temporary and of final invest- 
ments, will become pretty general amongst all classes 
of people engaged in business. And amongst the 
holders of land, those who may wish to woo fortune 
by going into business, and to increase their incomes 
by investing the price of their land in some good 
security, will have nothing to withhold them from 
disposing of it Estates, that are now in process of 
formation, will inevitably, when children have to be 
provided for, or upon the occurrence of any of those 
other causes we have already referred to, sooner or 
later enter upon the reverse process of subdivision. 
The great points to be kept in mind are that every 
acre, though it may not be actually in the market, is 
yet, at the will of its owner, marketable ; and that, 
whatever may be the will of its present holder, must, 
sooner or later, come on the market ; and that capital, 
availing itself of these facilities, naturally takes the 
direction of the land — in the long run, and to the 
majority of mankind, the most desirable of all in- 
vestments ; and that this maintains at a high figure 
the number of proprietors, that class which it is for 
the interest of the country should be as large as 
possible : it is obvious that this class will be large, in 
the era of capital, in every country w T here the land 
is within the reach of every man who has capital, 



THE ERA OF CAPITAL 



61 



exactly in proportion to the amount of capital he is 
desirous of investing in it. 

This state of things appears to have some ad- 
vantages. These may be summed up in the general 
remark that it is in complete conformity with the wants 
and conditions of an era of capital, such as that in 
which we live. Let us, however, endeavour to resolve 
this general remark into its constituent elements, 
As land is the most attractive of human possessions, 
the one possession which gives a man a place of his 
own to stand on in this world, it ought naturally to 
attract to itself much of the surplus capital of the day, 
and of capital that is being withdrawn from busi- 
ness. In the state of things, we have been just con- 
sidering, there is no hindrance to the operation of 
this tendency. This flow of capital towards the land 
will make it far more productive than it ever has been 
under any other system. For capital is nothing in 
the world but bottled-up labour, reconvertible, at the 
will of the holder, into actual labour, and the imple- 
ments and materials and products of labour ; and this 
system secures the advantage that the proprietors 
shall generally be men who have much capital in 
proportion to their land ; and much of this capital 
will, of course, be applied to it More land will be 
reclaimed, more rocks blasted and buried ; irrigating 
canals and cultivation will be carried higher up the 
sides of the mountains ; and more costly means of 



62 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



cultivation applied than are possible under either the 
peasant-proprietor system, or the large estate system. 
And this may be a state of things which will not dis- 
satisfy the economist. 

It is a state of things which the modern statesman, 
also, ought to regard with approval ; because the 
possession of land has always, everywhere, been the 
conservative element in human societies ; and the 
wide diffusion of the proprietorship of land is the only 
effectual means by which the statesman of the present 
day can hope to balance, and neutralise, the disturb- 
ing action of the large aggregations of population 
capital has called into being in the great commercial, 
and manufacturing cities of this era of capital. It 
ought to be a pleasing, and reassuring sight to him to 
behold streams of capital and of proprietors constantly 
flowing off from them towards the land : for in these 
streams he knows that power is being drawn off from 
those terrible centres of possible disturbance, which 
cause him so much anxiety ; and that what is thus 
drawn off from them is being added to the conserva- 
tive elements of society. So that if the order of 
society, or any valuable, but, at the moment, mis- 
understood, institution — misunderstood because things 
are in an unnatural state- — should have to sustain a 
shock, there would be less power on the side of those 
who might originate it, and more on the side of those 
who would have to bear the brunt of it— a state of 



THE ERA OF CAPITAL 



63 



things which would, probably, prevent the shock from 
ever occurring. Whereas to array on one side the 
land of a country held by a handful of proprietors 
against on the other side numbers and capital, is both 
to invite the shock, and at the same time to forbid 
the existence of the natural means for resisting it. 

Many great cities are terrible centres of possible 
disturbance, just because there are artificial barriers 
which keep asunder the land and its inhabitants on 
one side, and the cities with their capital and popula- 
tion on the other side. If things were so that streams 
of those who had had the energy and intelligence 
requisite for success, and had succeeded, were constantly 
flowing off from the cities to the land ; and back- 
currents of those, who were desirous of seeking fortune, 
flowing into the towns from the country ; and this is 
what ought to be the state of things in an era of 
capital ; there would be less opposition of interests and 
sentiments between the town and the country : they 
would together form more of an homogeneous system. 
If the town populations could be brought into some 
kind of connection w T ith the land, they would then, so 
far, have given hostages, a material guarantee, to 
social peace, and order. 

Neither will they be dissatisfied who are desirous 
of seeing property so distributed as to favour as much 
as possible the moral and intellectual condition of the 
community. Property will everywhere be diffused ; and 



64 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



never being encumbered more than very temporarily, 
that is never beyond the life of the encumbered holder, 
for on our supposition it will always pass from hand 
to hand perfectly unencumbered in every way, its 
numerous holders in every locality will be in a posi- 
tion to do, and to support, whatever need be done, 
and supported. Take the instance of the support of 
religion. It would be mischievous under the pre- 
viously considered system to disestablish a national 
Church, because as all the surplus produce of the 
valley, in the form of a rent of 6,000/. a-year, is sent 
out of the valley, there is nothing left in the hands of 
the population, such as we imagined it had become, 
to support religion, except in the humblest, that is in 
a thoroughly unworthy, form. And here we cannot 
but think about ourselves ; and our doing so will con- 
tribute somewhat towards bringing us to a better 
understanding of this particular point. As things 
now are in this country the portion of the rent which 
is retained in every parish for the maintenance of 
religion is in multitudes of cases the only part of the 
rent that is retained, and spent, on the spot, among 
those whose labour produces it. No one will deny 
that this is in many ways an advantage to them. To 
instance one advantage, it is often the cause of the 
existence of needed institutions, as was lately seen 
most conspicuously in the part the clergy took in the 
establishment and maintenance of schools, which was 
an undeniable benefit to their poor neighbours, and 



THE ERA OF CAPITAL 



65 



to the country, though at the same time something 
besides and beyond what they were bound to do for 
the maintenance of the knowledge and of the services 
of religion. In many places, too, it is the only part 
of the rent which supports in the locality a man of 
education and refinement ; a social and political ad- 
vantage which cannot be denied, or overlooked. And 
this appropriation of a small portion of the rent 
has largely benefited literature, and to some extent 
science. It also gives us a large number of families, 
who far outnumber those supported by the great 
bulk of the rent of the country, and are in a very 
favourable position for bestowing on their sons the 
best attainable education, carefully supervised. To 
them we owe multitudes of those who are at all times 
doing the country, at home and abroad, good service. 
We may, at the present moment, take as instances 
the Lord Chancellor and the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, both of whom were brought up in rural 
parsonages. Surely it would be a local and a national 
benefit if more of the rent of the land were somewhat 
similarly conditioned. And perhaps the greater part of 
it would be under the system we are now considering. 
And in addition to this much other property in the 
form of capital, belonging to such owners of the land, 
would be brought into each locality, some of which 
would be sunk in the land, and some retained in 
securities paying interest and dividends, which would 

F 



66 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



be spent on the spot. Under such a state of things 
there would be abundance of local means for the 
voluntary support of all needed institutions, and of 
religion among the rest ; and a national establishment 
would then cease to be the necessity it is now. At all 
events, should the national provision for the mainten- 
ance of religion, which is incidentally a provision, and 
as things now are very usefully so, for spending a 
small part of the rent of each parish, often a very 
small part indeed, in the parish itself, be cancelled, 
the aspect of things in many places, and the conse- 
quences, would be such as to bring many, who are 
pretty well satisfied with things as they are without 
thinking why, to join in the cry for free trade in 
land. 

IV. We have been considering three conditions 
under which the land of the valley may be held ; 
first, that of a thoroughly carried-out system of 
peasant proprietorship, which is the natural consum- 
mation of things when land is the only means of 
supporting life, or so nearly the only means that other 
means disturb its action so little that they need not 
be considered ; and which is the cause of its being 
divided down to the lowest point at which it is capable 
of supporting life ; we then passed to the opposite 
extreme, to which the name of landlordism has been 
given; and we came at last to that which would 



ARTIFICIAL CONDITIONS 



67 



result, and in places has more or less resulted, from 
the free interaction of land and capital, in this era of 
capital. We still have to consider how it has been 
brought about that, in this era of capital, the free 
interaction of the two, in this country hardly exists 
at all ; what it is that here hinders its existence ; and 
so gives rise to the two abnormal, but closely con- 
nected, phenomena, that land is held only in very 
large aggregations, and that capital is driven away 
from the proprietorship of land, except in these large 
aggregations, to seek imaginary investment at home 
in never-ending bubble schemes, the manufacture of 
which is as much a trade as that of calico, or sent 
abroad to be sunk in impossible Honduras railways, 
the shares of non-existent Californian mines, and the 
bonds of hardly more existent states. 

This, as it is an unnatural state of things, can have 
been brought about only by the disturbing action of 
law. What, then, we have to consider now is, how 
law has stepped in, and hindered the existence of the 
state of things which the circumstances of the times 
demand, and which, therefore, would be their natural 
and normal condition ; and, as it seems, would be 
fraught with so many and such great advantages to 
individuals and to the country. The general sense of 
uneasiness, these questions have given rise to through- 
out society, indicate that in this matter there is some- 
thing constitutionally wrong. 

f 2 



68 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



When I was in the United States in 1867- 1868, 
I was frequently asked how the people of England 
could tolerate a system — the questioner always sup- 
posed that such a result could only be brought about 
by law — that gave the land of the country to a 
handful of the population ? I always replied ' that it 
was a natural consequence of our great wealth. A 
banker, an Australian, a contractor, a merchant or 
manufacturer, a coal or iron owner, made his million 
of money, and as he could live very well on 25,000/. 
a-year, he sunk it in land for the sake of the security 
the land offered, and because, moreover, its possession 
gave certain social and political advantages. That it 
was the competition of these millionaires, who were 
willing to pay for something beyond the productive 
powers of the land, that kept small purchasers out 
of the market, and also induced small holders to sell/ 
I gave this answer because I wished to avoid a long 
explanation, involving probably a great deal of argu- 
ment ; and I had not crossed the Atlantic to give, but 
to receive, information. 

I knew at the time that my answer was only a 
partial one ; that it omitted some very important 
elements of the question ; and, therefore, was worth 
very little, except for the purpose in view at the 
moment. 

For instance ; it rested on the assumption that the 
interest of money is now so high in this country that 



ARTIFICIAL CONDITIONS 



69 



under no circumstances — I admit that it is so under 
existing circumstances — would people hold small 
amounts of land, say a thousand acres, because they 
could get a better income by selling the land, and 
investing the proceeds otherwise ; and that none can 
afford to buy land, except those who can afford to 
buy so much that the moderate interest of the pur- 
chase will still in its amount be sufficient for all their 
wants. It is acknowledged that at present it is so. 
The whole question, then, turns on the point of what 
causes it to be so ? Is it unavoidable and natural ? 
If so, then it is all right as it is ; and the subject is 
withdrawn from the category of useful discussions. 

I, however, for one, am disposed to think that it is 
neither unavoidable nor natural. There is not such 
a great difference between the interest of money in 
France and in England, as to make the great bulk of 
the people of France desire, above all things, land, 
and the great bulk of the people of England quite 
indifferent about it, and even the few who have it in 
moderate extents desirous of getting rid of it. And, 
again, in the United States the interest of money is 
higher than it is here, and yet the ownership of land 
is regarded as the support, and its cultivation as the 
natural employment of, I suppose, four-fifths of the 
whole white population. To us, who look across the 
Atlantic, the cities appear to be America. But this 
is an optical illusion. The United States are as 



7o 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



large as the whole of Europe, and the cities, though 
centres of extraordinary activity, are few and far 
between. Its vast occupied area maintains an agri- 
cultural population ; and its agriculture is carried on 
upon so grand a scale that, when the eye is directed 
to it, everything else is utterly lost to view. The 
towns are nothing in a scene which takes in fifteen 
hundred miles of farm-houses from New York to 
Omaha, which begin again in the Great Salt Lake 
Valley, and again on the slopes of the Sierra-Nevada, 
reaching to the shore of the Pacific. 

The cause, then, why what does take place in France, 
and in the United States, does not take place here, 
must be sought for in something peculiar to ourselves. 
And our English peculiarity I believe to be this, 
that here the dominant and regulative fact bearing 
on the distribution of land is, that it is not distribu- 
table ; in plain English, that it is not saleable. This 
is brought about by the law which allows estates to 
be settled, that is to be taken out of the market and 
practically to be rendered unsaleable. This being the 
general fact with respect to land, the millions con- 
nected with its cultivation, seeing no opening for their 
ever becoming possessed of an acre of it, do not save 
for this purpose, and have their thoughts turned in 
other directions, that is to say, to the towns, to trade, 
or to emigration. And the rest of the population, 
being met by the same obstacle, have their thoughts 



ARTIFICIAL CONDITIONS 



71 



with respect to land, and the investment in it of their 
capital, equally shaped and coloured by the existence 
of that obstacle. That which is the dominant fact 
brings about what is the general feeling and practice. 
Where is the rural district in which, from the general 
condition of things, it could become a general practice 
among the population to work, and deny themselves, 
in order to acquire some property in the land ? Un- 
saleability is the general rule, and so this motive, and 
everything that would be connected with it, and grow 
out of it, has no existence. The same cause acts even 
in a higher degree on the rest of the population, 
because their thoughts are not, from the circumstances 
and character of their lives, so naturally directed to- 
wards the land. It would be just the reverse if every 
acre, everywhere, were always saleable : of course not 
always on sale, but always saleable at the will of its 
owner. 

Speaking generally, we are in the unique and 
anomalous position of a nation which has no class of 
proprietors of small, and moderate-sized estates, cul- 
tivating their own land. If circumstances were at all 
favourable to the maintenance amongst us of such a 
class, I believe it would be maintained, and would go 
on increasing. What is the case is, that circumstances 
adverse to it, and even destructive of it, have been 
created artificially. By the power of settling estates, 
large settled estates have everywhere been called into 



72 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



existence. Thenceforth the fight in each neighbour- 
hood is between large settled estates and small pro- 
perties. The large settled estates are endowed, 
practically, with perpetuity, and they have within 
themselves great powers of purchasing, that is of 
extension ; for their owners are already wealthy, and 
have, also, the power of discounting, for the purpose 
of making purchases, the future increase in value of 
their estates ; and they always have a strong motive 
for making such purchases. The small properties, as 
things now are, have very little of the element of 
perpetuity ; generally no self-contained power of 
extension by purchase ; and their proprietors have no 
special motives for attempting to extend them. The 
absorption, then, of the small properties is inevitable ; 
and has been, indeed, almost entirely effected already. 
Our system creates the large estates, and endows 
them with the power of swallowing up the small ones ; 
and so year by year takes the land, more and more, 
out of the market : the general result being that at 
last we have come to have only a handful of very 
wealthy rent-receiving proprietors, and few cultivating 
proprietors ; and that the thoughts, the prospects, 
and the capital of the richest nation in the world are 
all pretty completely turned away from the land. 

We said that our system was not either unavoid- 
able or natural. We ought, therefore, to show how it 
could have been avoided. We partially did this when 



ARTIFICIAL CONDITIONS 



73 



we pointed out its causes. Let us, however, endea- 
vour now to find for ourselves a distinct answer to 
the question, In what way could its growth and 
establishment have been prevented ? I need not 
repeat its peculiarities : they have just been referred 
to. Suppose, then, a century ago, the Legislature 
had come to be of opinion that it was contrary to 
public policy that an existing generation should have 
its hands tied, in dealing with the land of the country, 
by the necessities, or the personal and family am- 
bitions, or the ideas, of preceding generations ; and 
that public policy required that the land of the 
country should pass from hand to hand perfectly free, 
each successive holder having an absolute interest in 
it ; receiving, and transmitting it, quite unencumbered, 
precisely in the same way as a sovereign passes from 
hand to hand. And that, therefore, it had been 
enacted, with the view of securing these conditions, 
that land should not be charged in any way ; that it 
should not be encumbered with any uses, or settle- 
ments of any kind ; and that there should be no 
power of mortgaging it beyond the life, or tenancy, 
of the mortgagor. Such an enactment, it is obvious, 
would have rendered the existence of the present 
system impossible. It would have had this effect, 
because no one having had the power of encumbering 
land in favour of his widow and younger children, 
those whose property was only land, would have 



74 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



been obliged to provide for their widows and younger 
children by bequeathing to them certain portions of 
the land itself. This would have subdivided the 
large estates. It, also, would have secured to every 
owner the power of at any time selling his land, if 
for any reason he were desirous of so dealing with it. 
It is, then, presumably, the permission of the very 
opposite to that which would have prevented the 
present state of things from existing, that has given 
it existence. 

We have been speaking of what might have been 
done. Let us look at something that has been done. 
The course of recent legislation upon this subject is 
very instructive ; and, as far as it goes, is confirma- 
tory of what we have been saying as to both the 
cause, and the remedy, of existing evils. We often 
hear remarks made upon the mischievous consequences 
of land being held in mortmain. But the fact is, that 
in this country there is no such thing as land held in 
mortmain. The Legislature has seen the ill effects of 
its being so held, and, by a series of Acts, all having 
the same object, has released what was so held. The 
estates vested in the Ecclesiastical Commission were 
made saleable in 1843 ; the episcopal and capitular 
estates in 185 1 ; the estates of all other ecclesiasti- 
cal corporations in i860 ; of universities and colleges 
in 1858. The estates of schools and charities, and of 
municipal bodies, are now in the same state. By this 



ARTIFICIAL CONDITIONS 



75 



series of enactments the Legislature has, I believe, 
completely abolished the holding of land in mort- 
main. It could not, we may be sure, have done 
otherwise. There was among all enlightened people 
an overwhelmingly preponderant perception of what 
ought to be done ; and it was comparatively easy to 
deal with that portion of the land of the country to 
which these enactments apply. The ground they 
took was not that the corporate estates had a worse 
body of tenants, or were worse cultivated than settled 
estates, for that was not the case, but that it was an 
evil that land should not be saleable ; and so some, 
that was not saleable before, was made saleable. 

And now let us see how these Acts have worked. 
There have been instances in which incumbents of 
parishes have sold their glebes, and colleges some of 
their estates. But who have been the purchasers of 
these glebes and college estates ? As far as I can hear, 
in every instance the purchasers have been large landed 
proprietors. And they did no wrong in buying them,. 
Reader, had you and I been in their places we should 
have done just what they did. The result, however, 
has been that the large estates have become larger ; 
that is to say, the amount of land that was, through 
settlements, practically unsaleable, is now greater than 
it was before ; and that through legislation which 
had for its aim to make land saleable. The present 
system was so widely established, so powerful, and so 



7 6 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



ready and so able to avail itself of every opportunity, 
that there was no possibility of its being otherwise. 
The fate, then, of that portion of the previously 
mortmain-held land that has been sold, shows how 
our existing system works ; and enables us to see by 
an instance, which, though not great in amount, is yet 
distinct and palpable, the tendency in our large 
settled estates to continue growing, and by so doing 
to diminish the amount of saleable land in the country. 
If, instead of being misled by names, we look at facts, 
the true mortmain-held land of this country is the 
settled estates. 

The corporate lands are, probably, worth some- 
where about 30,000,000/. An idea is afloat that there 
will be a proposal to sell these, and to capitalise the 
price. But one can hardly suppose that many, except 
' adjacent ' proprietors, will be found to support the 
scheme, after people have seen what has become of 
such portions of these lands as have already been sold 
under the recent Acts just referred to ; and when they 
remember that the discharge of certain duties is 
attached to the revenues of these corporate and en- 
dowment estates. And if these duties are not always 
discharged satisfactorily, that is a matter which better 
superintendence might set right. At all events, it is 
better for the public that they should get out of these 
estates something, than that they should get nothing. 
If the public desire that it should be so, the Legisla- 



ARTIFICIAL CONDITIONS 



77 



ture, we may be sure, will be ready enough to see 
that all endowments are turned to good account. 

We frequently hear the remark, and it is made as 
if it explained the existence and the character of our 
present system^ that feudalism still flourishes in this 
country. This is very wide indeed of the mark. 
.There are many, we may be sure, who would be dis- 
posed to think that it would be of advantage if some- 
thing like the division of land of the feudal times still 
obtained amongst us. The records of the Exchequer 
give the number of knights' fees at 60,215. Let that, 
however, be as it may, our system is as unlike that of 
feudalism as anything can be. It belongs in its whole 
character to the era of capital, but in the form a 
land-system must assume ; and this is its distinguish- 
ing feature, when the flow of capital to the land has 
been so interfered with as practically to prohibit its 
investment in land, except by very rich people, in 
very large amounts ; that is to say, by people who 
already have a great deal of land, or who have a 
great deal of capital. This is an artificial state of 
things belonging to the era of capital. The natural 
state of things in the era of capital would be the direct 
opposite : for that would issue in there being a multi- 
tude of owners of estates, purchased and used for all 
manner of purposes ; and to all the land being 
marketable ; and, indeed, to a considerable portion 
of it, everywhere, being at any time in the market. 



7 8 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



Both of these states, the artificial and the natural 
one, are equally possible in the era of capital. The 
first is brought about, when, as I have pointed out, 
the action of the law favours perpetuity, unsaleability, 
and agglomeration. The latter, when all the land is 
saleable ; and everyone who has capital, no matter 
whether much or little, is able to buy. There is no 
feudalism in either of these two states of things. The 
former is a factitious kind of capitalism. 

It may sound paradoxical, after what has been 
said, to announce that the change suggested in our 
present system would have the effect of raising the 
price of land : I am, however, of opinion that it would 
have this paradoxical effect ; because, though it would 
largely increase the supply, it would in a still greater 
degree increase the demand for, and the uses of land. 
It would make all who have capital possible purchasers, 
and would be an inducement to many, particularly 
among those whose work is on the land, to save 
capital in order that they might become purchasers. 
It would bring into play and activity a great variety 
of motives for purchasing. For instance ; we should 
then see joint-stock companies buying land which 
offers no particular advantages for residence, for the 
single purpose of manufacturing food out of it. They 
would pour capital into it in such amounts as only 
proprietors, who were also joint-stock companies, 
could. They would drain, mix soils, employ steam 



THE REMEDY 



79 



machinery for cultivation, for preparing artificial 
manures, and for cutting, crushing, and cooking food 
for cattle ; they would build beet-sugar factories, or 
whatever else would pay when done well, and on a 
large scale. Other districts adapted to small proper- 
ties, if such there be, we should see falling into the 
hands of small proprietors. Others again, which from 
their salubrity, or beauty, or local proximity to large 
towns, were adapted for residential purposes, we 
should see turned to this account : so that in places 
where now there may be one, or perhaps not one, 
resident proprietor, there would be a hundred, or a 
thousand. In these days of railways and capital all 
this is natural : and as it is natural it is what would be 
best for us. I cannot see anything bad in such a state 
of things ; and I think it is what will be brought about 
eventually. If it had existed during the last fifty 
years, probably a large portion of the 1,000,000,000/. 
of capital that have been sent out of the country, 
would have been kept at home. If there were perfect 
freedom in dealing with the land, in this rich and 
populous country, the price of agricultural land would 
rise to a higher price than it has attained in Switzer- 
land, Belgium, and parts of France, where it has long 
been selling for more than it sells for here. If a joint- 
stock company were to demonstrate that 25/. of 
capital per acre applied to the cultivation of 1,000 



So A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



acres was a profitable speculation, would that have 
any tendency to lower the value of land ? 

I believe that some of us will live to see the joint- 
stock principle introduced into farming, or rather 
applied to the ownership and cultivation of the land. 
My reason for believing this is, that it has been found to 
answer in everything else ; and that I can see no other 
way in which capital, to the amount required in these 
days, can be applied to the land ; and that I can see 
in the nature of the case no reason why it should not 
be so applied to the land. I take it for granted that, 
at this moment, land can be cultivated more produc- 
tively, and more economically, comparing the amount 
of produce with the cost of producing it, in farms of 
about i ,000 acres each, cultivated highly, and by 
steam machinery, than in any other fashion. If it 
be so, then the system must force its way to general 
adoption ; and to the looker-on, practically, no ques- 
tion remains uncertain but that of time. If he is 
satisfied that it is the natural system in the era of 
capital, he knows that, sooner or later, it must come. 
One of its pre-requisites, which it will take time to 
bring about, is, that the land should be owned by 
those who cultivate it ; probably, in each case, by 
a firm. Whether the firm consist of three or four 
partners, or of three or four dozen shareholders, will 
make no difference. On no other conditions will the 



THE REMEDY 



81 



costly plant be provided, or the inducement in the 
way of profits be sufficient. 

The past history of agriculture will here help us 
in our attempt to understand its future. The ab- 
original agricultural implement was, as we all know, 
a burnt stick — a broken branch, with its point 
hardened in the fire. That was in the stone era, 
and so the forest could not be felled. Only here and 
there a small plot could be cultivated with such an 
implement. The rest of the land, that is to say 
almost the whole of it, was a game preserve for wild 
animals, deer, wild cattle, wild hogs, &c. After no- 
body knows how many ages of this style of farming, 
and of utilising the land, came the discovery of metals. 
An iron hoe was then regarded as a more wonderful 
machine than a steam-plough is now. It was beyond 
the means of any individual, except perhaps here and 
there a great chief. Villages may have clubbed to- 
gether the few articles they had of exchangeable value, 
that is to say became a joint-stock company, to secure 
the possession of one of these marvellous implements. 
Whatever the land had yielded to the tillage of the 
burnt stick, and through the game preserves, it now 
yielded a great deal more. The game preserves still 
continued : but with respect to animal food also there 
had been a little advance, for domestic animals now 
began to appear in the village. One advance always 
draws on others. But the domestic animals were at 

G 



82 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



first kept only in small numbers, for they wandered 
over large expanses of land, almost exclusively forest ; 
the game still remaining the more important of the 
two. This was the second stage. But as time goes on 
iron, and the domestic animals, become more abun- 
dant ; and an ox, or so many ox-hides, can be ex- 
changed for a hoe. It is now possible to get so much 
more food out of the land, that one man can raise 
enough for the support of two. This immediately 
leads to slavery, which always makes its appearance 
in rude societies as soon as they have reached the 
point at which one man can produce more food than 
is sufficient for himself. This advances agriculture 
some steps further. Cattle become abundant ; labour 
is abundant ; and a sufficiency of iron is procurable. 
The forest is, therefore, taken in hand, and fields, that 
is spaces where the trees have been felled, are formed. 
And now the plough appears on the scene, and 
civilised society is fairly under weigh. Cultivation 
continues to extend, and with cultivation pasturage. 
The forest gradually disappears, and domestic animals 
entirely take the place of wild game, except for 
purposes of amusement and luxury. And so on up 
to the system with which we are all familiar. Every 
discovery advanced matters a step, and made the 
land more productive. As, for instance, the intro- 
duction of artificial grasses and roots, for our ancestors 
in the autumn used to kill and salt the beef and 



THE REMEDY 



83 



mutton they would require for the winter and spring. 
Then came a better supply of manures, and the two 
together rendered the abandonment of fallows pos- 
sible. The land has all along been a constant quan- 
tity. It, from the beginning, has been the same. 
But its produce has from the first been increasing 
through never-ceasing advances in the means and 
methods of cultivating it and of turning it to account. 

And now another advance is in sight, that of 
cultivation by steam. This implies a great deal. In 
each stage there grew out of the nature of things, as 
they then were, a certain definite proportion between 
the means used and the amount of land cultivated as 
one concern. In the burnt stick era the little culti- 
vated plots might have shown in the forest as the 
stars do in the field of heaven. In the hoe-period 
they were multiplied and enlarged as the stars appear 
to us through a telescope. Then we had peasant 
proprietors, and small tenants. The number and 
size of the luminous, that is, of the cultivated, plots 
were increasing, as means and appliances increased 
and improved. And now we suppose that a farm 
ought properly to be of 400 ©r 500 acres in extent. 
This means that the instruments of production and our 
organisation have advanced very greatly. So must it 
be with steam cultivation : each concern must be on 
a large scale. I have supposed that not less than 1,000 
acres will be necessary for turning to good account 

G 2 



8 4 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



the machinery that will be required for tilling the 
soil, and gathering in the crops, and preparing them 
for market, for preparing food for the stock, and for 
making artificial manures, &c. No existing buildings 
will be of any use. Everything will have to be con- 
structed for the purposes required. Land, therefore, 
that has to be cultivated in this way must be re- 
garded as quite unprovided with the necessary plant, 
as much so as a thousand acres of the prairie of 
Colorado, or of the Pampas of La Plata. And as 
nobody will invest all this costly fixed plant on other 
people's land, the land must be owned by those who 
are to cultivate it in this way. But the purchasing, 
the providing with such plant, and the so cultivating 
a thousand acres will require not less than 75,000/. 
This, at present at all events, is quite beyond a 
farmer's means. It can, therefore, speaking generally, 
only be done by firms or companies. If it will pay, they 
will do it. Lord Derby tells us the land ought to yield 
twice as much as it does now. We may, I suppose, set 
the present gross produce of good average land fairly 
farmed at 10/. an acre. If land highly cultivated by 
steam, and with the liberal application of capital we 
are supposing, would advance its produce to only half 
of Lord Derby's supposed possible increase, the gross 
yield would be 1 5/. an acre. And this might give, after 
allowing one-third for working expenses, deterioration, 
and insurance, 13^/. per cent, on the investment ; but 



THE REMEDY 



we will put the working at half, which will leave a profit 
of io per cent. If this could be done, then the streams 
of English capital that are perennially flowing off into 
all countries would be profitably diverted to the culti- 
vation and enrichment of our own land ; and no small 
portion of the other millions we are year by year 
paying the foreigner for food, might be paid to food- 
manufacturers of our own, and so saved to the country. 

France produces at home its own sugar ; and, 
besides, sends to us 60,000 tons a-year. We do 
not manufacture sugar at home, because an English 
tenant would not spend 8,000/., if he had it, in 
erecting a sugar factory on another man's land ; but 
such firms of proprietors could, and probably would, 
on their own. 

Capital swept away the peasant proprietor. It 
has almost swept away the 50-acre tenant. And it 
will sweep away the 2 50-acre tenant. But it offers 
to all better careers than those it closes against them. 
The system it is bringing upon us will employ more 
hands, and will require them all to be better men, and 
will pay them all better, both for their work and for 
their capital. Under it there will be openings every- 
where for everyone to become what he is fit to 
become. This will be a premium on education ; and 
it will do more to suppress drunkenness in the rural 
districts than any conceivable licensing, or permissive, 
or prohibitory Acts. 



86 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



I do not know what, under such a state of things, 
will become of our old friend, who w r as also the friend 
of our forefathers — the agricultural pauper. On a 
farm of a thousand acres, carried on in the fashion we 
have been supposing, there would be no place for 
him. Upon its area there would not be a man who 
was not wanted. And all who were wanted would 
be well paid and well housed. There would be 
engine-men, and stock tenders, and horsemen, and 
labourers, more in number perhaps than the hands 
now employed on the same space, but all would be 
better off, and would be better men. In order, how- 
ever, that this may be brought about, capital must 
be allowed free access to the land, that is to say, 
the land must be set free. 

The argument from the picturesque will not arrest 
the course of events. Never was the country so 
picturesque as when there was no cultivation at all, 
and the noble savage pursued his wild game through 
the primaeval forest over hill and dale. The little 
hoed plots of a succeeding epoch were a great en- 
croachment on the picturesque. The fields that came 
in with the plough carried the disfigurement still 
further. Our hedges and copses, under the existing 
system, are rapidly disappearing. But the human 
interest in the scene has always been increasing : and 
it will culminate when the steam-engine shall have 
brought in a system under which those who do the 



THE REMEDY 



87 



very lowest forms of labour then required will be 
better fed, and housed, and clothed, and paid, because 
it will be a system that will not admit of bad work, 
than was possible under previous systems, which did 
not depend for their success on the intelligence of the 
labourer, and the accuracy and excellence of his 
work. 

Such a system would carry out to their logical and 
ultimate consummation the free interaction of capital 
and agricultural land. All such land, the implements, 
and whole plant employed in its cultivation, and 
even the labour, skill, and intelligence of its cultivators, 
would be represented by dividend-receiving, 10/., 5/., or 
il. share certificates, transferable merely by the double 
endorsement of the seller and of the buyer. The old 
certificate, thus endorsed, would be presented to the 
manager, if necessary by post ; and a new certifi- 
cate would be issued to the new holder. These 
certificates would circulate almost as freely as money ; 
but as it would be a kind of money that would carry 
a dividend at the rate of capital employed in safe 
ventures, say four-and-a-half or five per cent., with a 
prospect of improvement, wherein it would differ 
from the low interest of Exchequer bills, the holding 
of such certificates would be the most attractive kind 
of savings' bank to the poor, and to all. The great 
difficulty in the way of saving in the case of the poor, 
and of all who are unacquainted with business, is to 



88 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



find suitable, and safe, investments. That difficulty- 
would be removed ; and they would be enabled to 
participate, according to their means, as easily, and 
on the same footing, as the richest and the best in- 
formed, in the wealth and property of the country. 
Amy labourer on any joint-stock farm, or elsewhere, 
any artisan, any servant girl, any poor governess, who 
might save a few pounds, might invest them in a 
share or two ; and the increment, whether earned or 
unearned, in the value of land, and of its produce, 
would go to them proportionally with the wealthiest. 
Everyone would, in this way, have opened to him an 
avenue for participating, to any amount possible to 
him, in the possession of the land everywhere. A 
large proportion of the population would thus become 
interested in the development of its resources, and so 
in the prosperity of the country, and in the order and 
stability of society. The land would, in a sense, 
become mobilised ; and the possession of it rendered 
capable of universal diffusion. Any one of the present 
owners, who might come to wish that any portion of 
his land might be held, and used, in this fashion, 
might receive, if he chose to be so paid, as many 
shares in each concern formed out of it, as would equal 
the value of land he might make over to it. 

If the possibility of such a system could be de- 
monstrated, the existing owners of land might be the 
first to wish to see it carried out. The following 



THE REMEDY 



89 



figures will show why. Suppose a thousand acres of 
agricultural land is letting at what is about the average 
rent of such land, that is at about 30*". an acre, the 
landlord will be receiving for it 1,500/. a year, subject 
to some not inconsiderable deductions. But if this 
same land were sold to a cultivating firm at 50/. an 
acre, the price being received in shares, and the con- 
cern were to pay to original shareholders 10 per cent, 
the rent of 1,500/., subject to deductions, would have 
become a dividend of 5,000/. subject to no deductions, 
But w r e will suppose only 3,000/., for that will be 
double the present rent, and so quite sufficient for 
our argument. 

So far as the system might be adopted would 
ownership of the land of the old kind cease, and in 
its place be substituted, in convenient amounts, 
dividend-receiving, easily transferable, and freely cir- 
culating capital stock certificates, within everybody's 
reach, secured upon definite portions of the agricul- 
tural land of the country, representing its present 
value, and participating in its future advances in 
value. Such certificates would, also, offer an im- 
proving security for trust funds of all kinds, and for 
endowments. 

The combination of what I have observed, during 
a life in the country, of the requirements of land, and 
of the condition and wants of the poor, with my 
experience of the duties of a trustee (which have de- 



90 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

volved upon me to, perhaps, an unusually great extent), 
suggested to me the ideas I have just been endeavour- 
ing to present to the reader. If they are practicable 
they may contribute to the solution of existing diffi- 
culties of several kinds. I am aware that they can- 
not do this, because in that case they would be quite 
visionary, if they are not in harmony with the natural 
requirements and conditions of the era of capital. 
That they would have been impracticable in other 
times does not prove that they would be impracticable 
now. 

But we have been enticed off the main line of our 
discussion to a by-path, which was offering a very 
Interesting view into the future. We must now return 
to the point we had before reached, which was that of 
the popular misconceptions that are held with respect 
to our existing system. There are, then, again, others 
who suppose that its salient peculiarities may be ex- 
plained by a reference to what is frequently spoken 
of as ' The Law of Primogeniture.' We have, how- 
ever, in this country no law of primogeniture in any 
sense that can be intended in such a reference. There 
is no body of rights attaching by law to the eldest 
son. The extent of what may be regarded as law in 
this matter is the right of the eldest son of a peer to 
succeed to his father's peerage ; and of the eldest sons 
of those who have hereditary titles to succeed to their 
father's titles. The power of entailing landed pro- 



THE REMEDY 



9i 



perty only acts in favour of the system of primogeni- 
ture, because the holders of landed property them- 
selves choose to work it in this direction ; for it 
might be used equally in favour of equal partition. 
There is then no law of primogeniture in the sense 
supposed. A man who buys land, or in any way 
comes to have the absolute disposal of it, as the 
word absolute implies, may dispose of it as he pleases. 
He may, if such should be his wish, leave it all to his 
youngest child, or in equal partition amongst all his 
children. Only, should he die intestate, the law will 
deal with his land (but we have just been told that 
this is to be altered) in the way in which, looking at 
the conduct in this matter of English landlords 
generally, it may be supposed the man himself would 
have dealt with it had he made a will. Possibly he 
may not have made a will because he knew that the 
law would so dispose of it. The law in the few ex- 
ceptional cases of this kind that arise from time to 
time, recognises, and acts on, the state of opinion 
and sentiment which has grown out of the power, it 
had itself given, of charging and encumbering land 
—a power which probably had no very glaring eco- 
nomical evils and inconveniences in an age when the 
population of the country was only a third of what 
it is at present, and when capital was only in an em- 
bryonic condition, and when, too, perhaps the political 
system this power upheld appeared to be necessary. 



92 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



It is not, then, any law of primogeniture which has 
brought about our present land system, but certain 
powers, conferred by law, which have suggested to 
people the desirability of acting on, and enabled 
them to act on, the voluntarily adopted principle of 
primogeniture ; that is to say the power of charging 
and encumbering their estates. And, now that the 
era of capital is upon us, it is not improbable that the 
policy of continuing this power will be debated, for at 
such a time it has some very obvious evils and in- 
conveniences. I do not mean that it will be recon- 
sidered by the legislature before many years have 
elapsed, or in the first instance ; for in a matter of 
this kind the legislature can do nothing but give 
form and sanction to what the circumstances of the 
times have already settled. If it shall be generally 
felt that the ill consequences of the exercise of this 
power overbalance its advantages, we may suppose 
that it will be withdrawn. This is not a question 
that will be much affected by any amount of speaking 
or writing, if that be all. If the facts of the matter 
are of themselves not felt as evils and inconveniences, 
no amount of speaking or of writing will bring 
people so to regard them. But should they come to 
be so felt, the people of this country will be desirous 
of dealing with them as all men, always and every- 
where, have dealt with such matters, when they were 
seen to admit of removal. But however that may 



THE REMEDY 



93 



be, it is not a law of primogeniture, but certain law- 
conferred powers, enabling people to act on the 
principle of primogeniture, which are the cause of 
the existing state of things in this matter. 

In the discussion of this subject, which ramifies 
in many directions, for it has moral and social, as well 
as economical, political, and constitutional bearings, 
many questions will be propounded, and will have to 
be considered : such, for instance, as whether, in these 
several respects, a comparatively small number of large 
land-owners is better, in this era of capital, and of 
large cities, than a large number of land-owners, 
holding estates varying in dimensions, according to 
the amounts of capital people would, from a variety 
of motives, be desirous of investing in land, were all 
the land of the country free and marketable ; or, in 
other words, whether, in such times, the artificial con- 
dition of things we have been considering is safer 
than, and preferable to, the natural condition ? The 
share-certificates, I just now spoke about, would make 
it free and marketable to the greatest imaginable 
degree. 

It will also be asked whether it is fair to the 
land-owner, and, all things considered, advantageous 
to the community, that he should be obliged to pro- 
vide for his widow and younger children either by 
saving the means for making such provision from his 
income, or by leaving to them, absolutely, what por- 



94 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



tions of his landed property he may think fit ? Those 
same share-certificates would supply an easy, inex- 
pensive, and safe method of providing for widows 
and younger children. 

Another question will be whether in this era of 
capital, which means that there will always be some 
large capitalists as well as many small ones, the 
liberation of the land would really lead to the ex- 
tinction of large estates ? Largeness is a word of 
comparative signification. Of course there would be 
few such large estates as there are now, because that 
is the result of growth through many generations 
under the very peculiar circumstances we have been 
referring to : but if the interchange of land and 
capital were perfectly free there would be everywhere 
many considerable estates, though the general order 
of things might be estates of moderate size, descend- 
ing to holdings of small extent, which might be the 
most numerous of all ; or such holdings might not be 
very numerous : for in matters of this kind there is 
always much that is unforeseen. One point, how- 
ever, may, I think, be held to be certain : we shall 
never, in this country, see anything approximating to 
peasant proprietorship. That is simply inconceivable 
in the era of capital. Both the land and the man 
can be turned, now, to better account. Its advocates 
are either ignorant demagogues, or members of that 
harmless class who, having their eyes in the back of 



THE REMEDY 



95 



their heads, can only see, and wish for, what has 
passed away. If we ever come to have share-estates, 
such as I have endeavoured to describe, they will, 
probably, average, as I said, about 1,000 acres each. 

It will, perhaps, also, be suggested that there may 
be some mixed method of proceeding, which, while 
respecting existing arrangements, would, at the same 
time, largely increase the number of proprietors ; as, 
for instance, to deal with the rents of endowments 
compulsorily, and with those of the owners of land 
at their option, just as the tithe was dealt with ; that 
is to say, to convert the rent into a permanent charge 
upon the land ; and then to sell the land, subject to 
this rent-charge, the yearly value of which would be 
ascertained, as is done in the case of the tithe com- 
mutation rent-charge, by reference to certain averages 
of the price of the different kinds of grain cultivated 
in this country. The immediate gain to corporations, 
and trustees, and to proprietors who might be dis- 
posed to sell, would be considerable, for they would 
continue to get their present rents, without deductions, 
and would, besides, be able to sell the proprietary 
right in the land, and its capacity for future increase 
in value, for whatever they would fetch in the market. 
This would suit the share-system, for the land might 
then be bought with or without the rent, as it might 
happen in each case. 

Our opinions on any question are very much in- 



9 6 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



fluenced by our observation of the direction things 
are taking. Now, with respect to our existing land- 
system, all changes in matters connected with, or 
bearing upon, it, and which appear to be either 
imminent, or possible, are likely to take only the 
direction of what will be unfavourable to its mainten- 
ance. For instance, if it be decided that endowments, 
now consisting of land, should be capitalised, in order 
that more land may be brought into the market, the 
line of argument, that triumphed against them, will 
be equally available against our existing land-system. 
And, furthermore, if the lands belonging to charities, 
institutions, and corporations be sold, it is evident 
that, as things now are, they will, for the most part, be 
bought up by the owners of large contiguous estates ; 
so that, in fact, the remedy attempted will only make 
the evil it was intended to remedy, more glaring : the 
great estates will have become greater. The fate of 
the corporate estates, thus compulsorily sold, will be 
that of the thousands of small properties the large 
estates have of late years swallowed up. Everybody 
knows that many houses of the gentry of former times 
are now farm-houses on every large estate. It can- 
not be otherwise, for this is how a large estate is 
formed. All the smaller estates in the neighbour- 
hood, just like the meteoric bodies which come at last 
to be overpowered by the attraction of our planet, 
must, as things are now, gravitate towards it : their 



THE REMEDY 



97 



end is, sooner or later, generally the former, to fall 
into it. So, if the estates of the endowments are 
sold, will it be with them. It has been so with those 
that have been already sold. 

Again, if the Church be disestablished and dis- 
endowed, a certain proportion of the rent of each 
parish in the country, pretty generally more or less 
increased by private income, will cease to be spent 
within the parish. What is so spent at present, as far 
as it goes, and to a great extent in many cases, lessens 
the hard and repellent features of the absenteeism 
of the owners of the land in those parishes. Disendow- 
ment, therefore, will make the evils and inconveniences 
of the present system, whatever they may be, more felt, 
and more conspicuous ; and a better mark, as they will 
then stand clear of all shelter, for adverse comment. 

So, too, if the agricultural land of this country 
should continue, and there is no reason for supposing 
the contrary, to fall, year by year, into fewer hands, the 
strength of those who will have to defend the system 
will be diminishing at the very time that wealth, 
intelligence, numbers, union, and every element of 
power, are increasing on the side of those who cannot 
see that they have any interest in maintaining it. 

If the recent Education Act have the intended 
effect of educating the millions who have no landed 
property, the most coveted of all human possessions, 
will they find anything in the existing system that 

H 



98 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



will commend it to their favour? Will they not 
rather be in favour of a system, which would make 
every acre of land in the country marketable ? 

If people should come to think that the reason 
why France, notwithstanding the abject condition of 
a large proportion of its peasant-proprietors, and 
without our stupendous prosperity in manufactures 
and commerce, has become so rich, is that it keeps its 
savings at home, because the land of the country is 
marketable, while we, every year, scatter tens of millions 
of pounds of our savings all over the earth to be utterly 
lost, because they cannot be invested at home in the 
land of the country, the natural reservoir, or savings' 
bank, of the surplus capital of a country, as well as the 
best field for its employment, will they not go on to wish 
that the land here, too, could be made marketable ? 

If population and capital go on increasing, may 
we not anticipate that this will engender a desire — 
for in these days of railways and telegraphs it is much 
the same where a man lives — that the agricultural 
land of the country should be brought into the state 
of divisibility and marketableness, into which some 
of the land in the neighbourhood of our great cities 
has been brought through the pressure of circum- 
stances ? This pressure may extend, and be felt 
with respect to the land of the whole country. 

In an era, too, when popular principles so thoroughly 
pervade society as to influence all our legislation, is 
it probable that a system which is the reverse of 



THE REMEDY 



99 



popular will commend itself to general acceptance ? 
It is also on the cards now that manual labour may 
become so costly as to necessitate, if a great deal of 
land is not to go out of cultivation, the substitution of 
machinery to such an extent as w T ill be done, gene- 
rally, only by those who own the land. 

The whole stream of tendency, then, both in what 
is now occurring, and in what is likely to occur in no 
remote future, seems setting strongly in a direction 
which cannot be regarded as favourable to the main- 
tenance of our present land-system. And the obser- 
vation of this will, sooner or later, consciously or 
unconsciously, very much modify opinion on the 
subject ; for in human affairs, just as with respect to 
the operations of Nature, we are disposed to acquiesce 
in what we have come to understand is inevitable. 

But we have for some time lost sight of the Valley 
of the Visp, though not of its imaginary sole Proprietor. 
He has all along been before us. What we have been 
considering was how, in this era of capital, he came 
to be its sole proprietor, what are the action and effects 
of those artificial conditions which placed him in this 
position, and what are the chances of the maintenance 
of these artificial conditions. 

Things move fast in these days : but few people 
expect that any change will take place in his time. 
He will continue in the position of social eminence, 
and of political power, he now occupies. He will 

H 2 



ioo A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



go on hoping to leave after him a line of descendants 
occupying the same, or even a greater, position. This 
will be the dominant motive in his mind. If any land 
is to be bought in his neighbourhood, there will still 
be a likelihood that he will become the purchaser of 
it. It has always been so, since the estate became 
the predominant one in those parts. And that it 
should be so is now regarded almost as a law of 
nature ; as something quite inevitable ; so that no 
one need enquire whether it is beneficent in its action, 
or otherwise. If he have not cash in hand to pay for 
the new purchase, he will mortgage his property to 
the amount of the price. In this era of capital the 
value of land goes on increasing, and so the mortgage 
will in time be paid off by the estate itself. In this 
way, in these times, every large estate has within 
itself, even without Austrian marriages, 1 a progress- 
generated power of absorption and growth. Without 
lessening the area of the estate, he will provide for 
those who are dependent on him by charging it with 
the payment of whatever he may please to leave 
them : so that while no very apparent injustice will 
be done to them, the position of the single represen- 
tative of the family will not be affected, for he will 
still appear before the world as the owner of the whole 
estate. He will also hope that, from time to time, 
the representatives of the family will, by making pur- 

1 Bella gerant alii. Tu felix Austria nube : 
Nam, quae Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus. 



THE REMEDY 



101 



chases in the way in which he has, and by the intro- 
duction of great heiresses into the family, increase the 
extent of the estate. 

At times, when he hears how demagogues are 
raving about the nationalisation of the land, and the 
tyranny of capital; and when he visits the valley, 
and sees the condition of many, indeed of all the 
people on the estate, he may feel that he is in a some- 
what invidious position. But he will feel also that no 
one is to blame : his progenitors could not well have 
acted otherwise than as they did ; nor could he well 
act otherwise than as he is acting, and will act. And 
those who are discussing the matter, sometimes with 
the tone of men who are suffering a wrong, would, we 
may be sure, not act otherwise, under the circum- 
stances, themselves. 

Suppose, however, that for the restricted and arti- 
ficial action of capital, which has brought this state of 
things about, its natural action has been substituted : 
what will be the effect on the hopes, and on the family, 
of the proprietor of our valley ? We may venture to 
predict that the natural order of things will give him 
a securer chance of realising his hopes in their best 
sense. His family will start, in the race of life, in 
possession of the whole of the land of the valley. For 
them this will be no bad start. The land of the 
valley will bear division for several generations with- 
out reducing the members of the family to a bad 
position, even if none of them should do anything at 



102 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



(all to improve their position. But this, judging by 
the ordinary principles of human nature, we may be 
sure, speaking generally, will not be the case. Two 
centuries hence, it will be their own fault, if, instead 
of the family being really only one man, they have 
not become a clan in the valley : a clan possessed of 
more social importance, and of more political in- 
fluence, than could attach to a family represented by 
a single member. Some will have become invigor- 
ated by the inducements to exertion that will have 
come home to them, and by the wholesome conscious- 
ness in each that he is somewhat dependent on him- 
self for maintaining and improving his position. 
Whatever efforts to advance themselves they may 
come to make, will not be made under unfavourable 
circumstances. None of them will have occasion to 
feel, as perhaps some of their ancestors at times had, 
that they are in an invidious position ; and none 
will regard them with feelings that, if not ' somewhat 
leavened with a sense of injustice/ do yet arise from 
a suspicion that things are not quite as they ought 
to be, through there having been some kind of inter- 
ference with their natural course. Is not this a 
nobler, a more patriotic, a more human, and in every 
way a better prospect than that which is now feeding 
the somewhat misdirected paternal ambition of the 
present proprietor ? Would it not be a better antici- 
pation of the fortunes of his family, to think of them 



THE REMEDY 



as a numerous body of proprietors, occupying a 
good position, through the natural action of the cir- 
cumstances and conditions of the times, than to look 
forward to the uncertain character and uncertain 
position of a single member of his family, who will be 
maintained, if maintained, by conditions, on the per- 
manency of which no dependence can be placed, 
because they are at discord with the needs and cir- 
cumstances of the times ? 

Land now no longer rules. Capital is king. 
Capital it is that does everything now ; that even, but 
under abnormal and artificial conditions, aggregates 
our large estates. Under this dynasty the advantages 
the land is capable of conferring on man are not with- 
drawn, but much increased both in degree and in 
variety ; and everything desirable, the land not ex- 
cepted, becomes, in a manner and degree inconceivable 
in all foregone times, the reward of personal exertion 
and worth. This is what distinguishes this dynasty 
from those that have preceded it. If it be the true 
king, it will prove its legitimacy, by removing all arti- 
ficial barriers to the development and exercise of its 
beneficent powers. If it cannot do this, it is a 
bastard dynasty, and will be dethroned. 

V. But I have not yet exhausted all the possible 
forms in which land may be held. Their name is 
legion. Every country, and every condition of society, 



io4 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



has had, has now, and will have, its own. I say 
nothing of the serf-system : that among civilised 
nations has gone for ever. So has the system of 
village communities. The co-operative system, how- 
ever, has believers, and, it appears possible, may have 
a trial. But I, for one, because I believe in capital, 
and in the individual, have no belief in this kind of 
co-operation, as a general system, either in manu- 
factures and commerce, or, and that least of all, in 
agriculture : and, with respect to the latter, whether 
the co-operators be renters, or owners. Ownership 
would make no difference at all beyond the power 
owners would possess of mortgaging their land ; 
and this, as it is a resource that would very soon be 
exhausted, need not be considered here. The only 
practical difference would be, that co-operative renters 
would require a larger extent of land to live from 
than co-operative owners, whose land was unmortgaged. 
If the system of co-operation were general, competi- 
tion, and the increase of population that would have 
to be provided for, and which would lead either to 
subdivision, or to an increase of co-operators upon 
each farm, would inevitably bring the style of living 
down to a point at which it would be no better than 
it is now in the Visp Valley. And this is so low a 
condition of life, both materially and intellectually, 
that most people are of opinion that it is not worth 
while to go in for its maintenance, or even, perhaps, 
to regret its disappearance. 



AGRICULTURAL CO-OPERATION 105 

A population of co-operators sunk to this depth, 
and they could not but sink to it, would, like the old 
Irish potatovors, or the French petty proprietors, be 
in a state of chronic wretchedness and degradation : 
this, in bad seasons, amounts to a state of starvation. 
If the individual Irish potatovor could not, and the 
individual French petty proprietor, in whom the parsi- 
monious disposition of his race is exaggerated, rarely 
can, save, because bad seasons oblige him to mort- 
gage his little plot of land, from which he can hardly 
extract a living in good seasons, we may be sure that 
neither would, nor could, such co-operators. I am 
disposed to prefer the present condition of our agri- 
cultural labourers, the most feeble class amongst us. 
At all events, they have more than one buffer between 
themselves and bad seasons. First there is the 
reservoir of capital possessed by the farmer. This is, 
to the extent of wages, generally, sufficient. In conse- 
quence of its existence bad seasons make little or no 
difference to hired labourers. But under the co-opera- 
tive system there would be no farmers, but only co- 
operators, just able to get along in ordinary seasons. 
Our labourers have, also, a second buffer, which is 
often of some use to them, in their wealthy neighbours. 
But under the co-operative system there would prob- 
ably be no wealthy neighbours. They possess, too, 
a third buffer in the State, which comes in, in the 
last resort, to rescue them from the extreme conse- 



106 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

quences of every kind of calamity. But under a 
system of peasant co-operators there could hardly be 
anything resembling our poor-law ; for the rationale of 
that is, that the people who cultivate the soil of the 
country, are themselves devoid of all property. These 
three buffers, then, would all have disappeared ; and 
nothing, as far as we can see, would arise, or could be 
created, to take their place. Such co-operators 
would be only co-operative peasant-proprietors : which 
is an absurdity. 

Another sufficient objection to this system is, that 
this is the era of capital, and that such a system 
would most effectually prohibit the outflow of capital 
to the land. Capital could no more be invested in 
the ownings of a wretched population of co-operators, 
than it could be in the plots of Irish potatovors, or of 
French petty proprietors. 

The conclusion, then, to which my moralising on 
the spectacle of the Valley of the Visp brought me 
was, that it belongs to a state of things, which, even 
in such secluded retreats, will not be able to linger on 
much longer : at all events, that it is not desirable 
that it should. We live under the dominion of 
capital, that is to say, of property other than land, or 
rather, perhaps, of an accumulated, and still accumu- 
lating, interest or dividend-bearing essence of all 
property (which is labour stored up in some material), 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 



107 



reconvertible at will, for productive purposes, into 
land, labour, or anything men have of exchangeable 
value. This mighty essence of all property is within 
the reach of us all, in proportion to our respective 
opportunities and abilities, and the efforts to gain 
possession of it we choose to make. But though 
within the reach of all, it is the mightiest of all magi- 
cians ; and it is evident that it must modify both the 
possession, the distribution, and the use of land, as 
well as everything else with which we have to do. In 
this there is nothing to be regretted. On the contrary, 
we ought all of us to congratulate ourselves on the 
advent of such an era : for it means that our re- 
sources for living, and for living well, in respect of all 
the requirements of human happiness, have been 
thereby vastly enlarged, and with a power of indefinite 
enlargement, irrespective of the area of the country. 
It means, too, that careers have been thereby 
opened to all, in ways which would have been in- 
conceivable when land supplied the only resource 
for living ; for that now every moral and intellectual 
endowment, every form of labour, and every aptitude 
can be turned to account. Even land can be made 
productive of greater benefits to us than we were 
wont to derive from it, for capital is showing that it 
has economical, and other, capacities for improving 
man's estate, undreamt of by its old cultivators. 

Popular language, which is the expression of 



io8 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



popular ideas, on this subject is adequate. It gives 
correctly the philosophy of the matter. What is 
wanted is that it should be clearly and generally 
understood, and used with accuracy. Money has 
both an intrinsic value as the representative of so 
much labour expended in the acquisition of the 
precious metals, and a conventional use as a metallic 
certificate, entitling its holder to exchange it against 
anything else in the world anyone has to part with, 
that costs in its production an equal amount of labour, 
there being at the time no abnormal disturbance 
of the ratio of supply ^ and demand. In the latter 
respect it matters not whether the certificate is on 
gold or paper : for the paper represents gold, or equal 
value. When earned, or otherwise acquired, by a 
kitchen-maid, a speculator, or a prime minister, it 
may be used in any one of three ways. First, it may 
be spent. Secondly, it may be hoarded. Thirdly, it 
may be used as capital. By spending is meant using 
money for the acquisition of what perishes in the use ; 
when it passes into another man's hands who again 
has the option of using it in any one of the three 
ways. It is evident that a man may spend money 
for clothing, food, and other necessary purposes, in 
order to live, and to enable him to do his work in 
life well, whatever it may be : it is then spent well, 
and in a sense productively. Or he may spend it 
on vice, or ostentation, or hurtful pleasures : it is 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 



109 



then spent ill. By hoarding is meant putting it away 
unproductively for future use. This was originally the 
only alternative to spending. The money stored 
away in the treasuries of the old Pharaohs was an 
instance of this unproductive suspension of use. This 
is still the practice, everywhere, among rude and igno- 
rant people : it is the hybernation of money ; its 
active uses are put in abeyance. As capital it may 
be used in two ways. It may either be invested, 
or employed. Investing it means placing it in secu- 
rities that do not require management, as, for instance, 
consols, mortgages, the rent of land, &c. ; the corre- 
lative of which is interest. Employing it means 
placing it in reproductive industries, as, for instance, 
in agriculture, manufactures, trade, commerce, &c, 
which require management, and the correlative of 
which is profit. This when divided among share- 
holders, who manage the concern jointly, or by a 
selection from their body, becomes dividend. This 
is the highest form of economical organisation. It 
gives to all, in their respective proportions, however 
small those proportions may be, the power of 
employing capital ; and to all who have the ability 
and integrity, the chance of rising to its management. 
It is the full development of the era of capital. It 
is the stage we have now reached. It enables the 
kitchen-maid, and everybody, to participate in the 
highest advantages of capital. I think we shall see it 



no 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



employed in this way in the cultivation and proprietor- 
ship of the land. If so, then, I think the poor and 
ignorant will have brought home to them a very 
strong motive for saving, because they will have con- 
stantly before their eyes a safe and profitable means 
of employing their savings. They, too, may thus 
become capitalists of the best kind. 

Two pregnant errors^ however, there appear to be, 
which it will be necessary for us to avoid, especially, in 
orderthat, as respects the land, we may secure thenatural 
conditions and natural advantages of our era of capital. 
One is the error of making people's wills for them di- 
rectly, in the way done in France. This breaks up the 
land of a country into properties smaller than they would 
become under the natural circumstances of the times : 
thus condemning, through legislation, a large part of 
the population, deluded by the fallacious disguise of 
proprietorship, to life-long misery. The other error 
is that of making people's wills for them indirectly, 
in the way done in some other countries. This has 
the opposite effect of agglomerating the land of the 
country into estates larger than they would become 
under the natural circumstances of the times, and of 
reducing the number of proprietors of agricultural land 
almost to the vanishing point. The first method both 
increases the number of wretched, degraded, and al- 
most useless proprietors, and diminishes the size of the 
properties, to a highly mischievous degree. The latter 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 



in 



just in proportion as it increases the size of the estates 
diminishes the number of proprietors. Both limit the 
variety of uses to which the land may be put. Both 
introduce causes of political action at variance with 
the natural conditions of the times. Every system 
has some advantages : but whatever may be the 
advantages of the latter, it is, at all events, an inter- 
ference with the natural rights of each generation, 
and with the natural course of things ; for it prevents 
the ownership, and the uses, of the land of the country 
adjusting themselves to the circumstances and the 
requirements of the times ; and hinders the applica- 
tion, to its culture, of that combination of knowledge, 
energy, and capital, which is manifestly within reach, 
and has become requisite for developing its produc- 
tiveness to the degree acknowledged to be possible 
now, but which cannot be secured under our present 
landlord-and-tenant system. If, however, this be a 
serious evil, it is, for reasons already given, one of 
that class of evils which engender their own remedy. 

Many are of opinion that landlordism was all 
along at the bottom of the evils of Ireland. Land- 
lordism is probably the cause of the Liberalism of 
Scotch constituencies. If so, what is there to prevent 
the same cause having, eventually, somewhat similar 
effects in England ? And, if so, then, what next ? 
If, however, the law, instead of interfering with the 
natural course of things, by indirectly making people's 



112 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



wills for them, would take care that the land of the 
country should pass from generation to generation, 
and from hand to hand, free from every kind of 
encumbrance, and so be all, at all times, at the will 
of the holder, marketable, a question, which is now 
causing much anxiety, because it may, before long, 
give much trouble, would probably die away, and be 
no more heard of ; nor, probably, should we hear any 
more of the antagonisms, with which we are all now 
so familiar, between the town and the country. One 
step, at least, would have been taken towards making 
us one people. 

The stimulus new scenes apply to the mind, more 
particularly when its owner is passing through them 
on foot, and alone, accounts for the foregoing chapter. 
But its having been thought out under such circum- 
stances by A is no reason for its being read by B, 
who is neither on foot, nor, probably, alone ; and the 
only scene before whom is, doubtless, the not un- 
familiar one of his own fireside ; one which, perhaps, 
has never invited, and may, too, be quite unfitted for, 
either the debate, or the rumination, of such discus- 
sions. Still, as it was suggested by, and constructed 
in the mind during, the tramp I am recording, and 
was so one of its incidents, I set it down here in its 
place. 



"3 



CHAPTER V. 

WALK TO SAAS IM GRUND— FEE, AND ITS GLACIER— 
THE MATTMARK SEE 

Nature never did betray 
The heart that loved her. 'Tis her privilege 
Through all the years of this our life to lead 
From joy to joy : for she can so inform 
The mind that is within us, so impress 
With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
With lofty thoughts. — Wordsworth. 

September 4. — Started at 6 A.M. My wife and 
myself on foot, the little boy on horseback. We 
walked down the Zermatt valley to Stalden ; and 
then, turning to the right, ascended the Saas valley. 
The latter being narrower — so narrow as to bring the 
opposite mountains very near to you — makes the 
scenery often more striking than that of the parallel, 
and wider, valley you have just left. Sometimes the 
mountain sides are so precipitous, quite down to the 
torrent, which tumbles, and brawls, along the rocky 
bottom, that no space is presented even for a cherry 
or apple-tree. For a great part of the way there is 

I 



U4 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



no valley, but only a fissure between the two moun- 
tain ranges ; and nothing can establish itself in the rifts, 
and almost on the surface of the rocks, but the larch. 

We stopped at a small road-side inn, about an 
hour and a half from Saas, for luncheon. A German 
professor and his wife came in for the same purpose. 
He was a tall, gaunt, study-worn man ; she a tough, 
determined little woman. He recommended Heidel- 
berg (it was not his university) both as a winter resi- 
dence, and as a place of education. The pair appeared 
to be, like their country-people generally, honest, 
earnest, and simple-minded, and in the habit of making 
the most of their small means without complaining. 
They were carrying very little besides themselves. 
We reached Saas im Grund at 12.30. We had been 
on our legs for six hours. The reason why walking 
on the level takes more out of one than climbing for 
an equal number of hours, is not merely that in 
walking the effort is always the same, but that it is at 
the same time rapid and continuous ; whereas in 
climbing it is not only varied, sometimes up and 
sometimes down, but is also deliberate, and often in- 
terrupted for a moment or two, while you are looking 
where to set your foot. 

A guide, who was on his way to Saas, overtook 
us soon after we had left St. Niklaus, and asked per- 
mission to accompany our party. He had lately 
made his first attempt to ascend the Matterhorn. 



WALK TO SAAS IM GRUND u 5 

He had not got to the top, but his having failed to 
do so was no fault of his. He could speak a little 
French, and was a good-natured, talkative fellow. 

At Saas we put up at Zurbriggen's Hotel. We 
found the house clean, the people obliging, the charges 
moderate, and the aspect of things quite unlike — all 
the difference being on the right side — that of the 
large Swiss caravansary. 

The contrast between Saas and Zermatt is very 
great. At Zermatt the valley ends, with great em- 
phasis, in a grand amphitheatre of mountains and 
snowy peaks. At Saas it seems suddenly brought to 
a close without any objects of interest to look upon. 
With the mind full of Zermatt, Saas appears but a 
lame and impotent conclusion. The village, however, 
is very far indeed from being at the head of the valley. 
That is to be found at the Monte Moro, five hours 
further on ; and, as it includes the Allalein glacier, 
the grand scenery of the Mattmark See, and of the 
Monte Moro itself, it has enough to satisfy even great 
expectations ; such as one has, of course, coming 
from Zermatt. 

September 5. — Went to the Fee glacier with the 

guide who had joined company with us yesterday. 

My wife and I walked. The blue boy rode. The 

path from the village lies across the stream, and up 

the hill on the west side of the valley. This brings 

you to a mountain-surrounded expanse of greenest 

1 2 



n6 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



grass, in which lies the village of Fee. The sub- 
stantial character of the chalets, and their tidy air, 
imply that the inhabitants of the place are pretty 
t well off. At the western extremity of the reclaimed 
\ and irrigated meadow is the great Fee glacier. The 
mounds and ridges of debris the glacier has brought 
down are very considerable. I mean the mounds 
and ridges that are still naked ; for, of course, all that 
now forms the cultivated valley must equally, only at 
remoter dates, have been brought down by the same 
agency. The only difference between the two is that 
time, and man, have levelled the latter, and enabled 
it to clothe itself in a vestment of luxuriant grass. 
This grass it is that has built and peopled the village. 
In this way human thought and feeling, or rather the 
multiplication of the thinking and feeling organism, 
man, is the direct result of the storms, and frosts, that 
have shattered, and riven, the mountain peaks above ; 
and of the glacier which has transported the frag- 
ments to the sheltered valley, where they could be 
turned to human account ; and, in the act of trans- 
porting them, so ground and comminuted their con- 
stituent particles as to render them capable of main- 
f taining a rich vegetation ; and which same glacier is, 
at this moment, engaged in supplying the irrigating 
streams, the stimulant of the richness of the vegetation. 



The upper part of the naked debris overlays large 
masses of ice. This is very uneven, and full of de- 



WALK TO SAAS IM GRUND 



pressions and cracks, the sides of which are, generally, 
covered with loose stones, but, sometimes, only with a 
thin film of mud. A fall upon this combination of 
ice, pebbles, and slush is the easily attained conse- 
quence of inattention to what you are about, and 
where you are going, while crossing such ground. We 
had a walk on the glacier ; and then, having taken in 
a fresh supply of materials for keeping up the steam, 
at a station on one of the moraine ridges, which gave 
us a good view of the contiguous glacier, the over- 
hanging mountains, and the green valley, we returned 
to Saas in the afternoon. 

After dinner I started with our guide — his com- 
municativeness during the two days he had been with 
us had made us feel as if he were an old acquaintance 
— for a walk over the Monte Moro, down the Val 
Anzasca, and over the Simplon, to Brieg. I also took 
a porter with me, who was to carry my sac as far as 
Macugnaga, from which place the guide was to take 
charge of it. He would not undertake to carry it where 
he was known as a guide, for that, he affirmed, would be 
losing caste. My wrappers I sent from Saas to Brieg 
by post. The charge was a franc and a half for a 
great coat and shawl. The latter, of fine wool, four 
yards in length, and two in width, is less than half 
the weight of an ordinary travelling rug, and more 
than twice as serviceable. My portmanteau I had 
already despatched from Zermatt for Brieg by the 



ri 8 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



same common carriers. The facilities of the Swiss 
post office for the conveyance of baggage — we found 
them very convenient — result from the department 
having absorbed all the diligences. It has thus 
become the carrier not only of letters, but equally of 
travellers, and of parcels of all kinds. In fact it 
seems that in Switzerland you may post anything 
short of a house. Mistakes appear to be made very 
seldom ; and when they are made you have a re- 
sponsible office to deal with, whose interest it is to 
set them right. At Saas the post-master was also 
the chemist, the doctor, the alpenstock-maker, &c. 
&c. of the place. Where there are but few people 
there must be many employments which will not 
occupy the whole of a man's time, or, singly, support 
him. 

My wife and the little boy accompanied me half 
of the way to the Mattmark See. Our plan was that 
they should return to Saas, and on the third day 
meet me again at Brieg. Soon after they left me I 
met two well-grown, clean-limbed Englishmen — it is 
always a pleasure to meet such specimens of one's 
countrymen — with whom I had a little conversation. 
I asked them what snow there was on the pass which 
they had just come over. They told me they had 
crossed seven snow-fields. The next morning I found 
only four, and of these two small enough. They 
could have had no wish to misrepresent ; but so fallible 



WALK TO SAAS IM GRUND 119 

is human testimony ; and nowhere more so than in 
Switzerland, where you never find two eye-witnesses 
giving the same account of the same thing. It is 
possible, however, that they may have made some 
detour in crossing, and, illogically, answered a question 
different from the one put to them. 

When the path reaches the Allalein glacier the 
scenery becomes grand. You are again on the 
visible confines of the ice-and-snow world. On the 
left side of the glacier you ascend a stiffish mountain. 
This brings you to the Mattmark See. The path 
is a little above, and the whole length of, its eastern 
side. It is carried on a level line along a very rocky 
descent, a few yards above the water. The humble 
plants in the narrow rocky strip between the path and 
the lake were charmingly full of colour, for at this 
time the leaves of many of them were assuming their 
rich autumnal tints. At the foot of this narrow 
strip of shattered rocks, interspersed with highly 
coloured vegetation, was the unruffled water, looking 
like polished steel, dark, hard, smooth, and cold. 
Beyond the water, and rising precipitously from it, 
towered the rugged, slaty-coloured mountains, capped 
with white, and streaked in their ravines with snow- 
drifts and glaciers. 

At the further end of the lake stands the Matt- 
mark Inn, exactly where it ought to stand. Further 
back, you would be disturbed by the feeling that you 



120 



A .MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



had not yet seen everything, and so were forming an 
imperfect conception of the scene. Further on, the 
scene would, by comparison, be dull. Higher up, the 
opposite mountain would not look so overpowering, 
and you would lose the mighty masses of fallen 
rock, as big as houses, which are close to the inn ; 
and you might also lose the water, which is the dis- 
tinguishing feature of the scene. As to the inn itself, 
so faraway in the mountains you cannot expect any- 
thing very extensive either in the way of structure 
or of cuisine. But you will get here, which is worlds 
better, a clean house, very obliging people, and all 
that they can offer for your entertainment — of course 
without much variety — good of its kind. If you go 
to Switzerland for what is peculiar to Switzerland* 
these are the places you should look out for. Large 
hotels, full of loiterers, among whom there may be 
perhaps a French count, or even a Russian Prince, 
may be found elsewhere than in Switzerland, should 
you think them worth finding. But the very advan- 
tage of the Mattmark See Inn, and of other moun- 
tain inns like it, is that you will see in them none of 
this kind of people, while you will have plenty of the 
grandest mountain scenery, and plenty of mountain 
work, if that is what you have come for, all around 
you. From the great hotels you may see the out- 
line of the mountains ; but that is a very different 
thing from being in the midst of the mountains them- 

* 



WALK TO SAAS IM GRUND 



121 



selves ; in the very society and company of the 
mountains ; so that you look at each other face to 
face, and can make out all their features, and all the 
components, and the whole colouring, of every 
feature. 

From Saas to the Mattmark See Hotel is three 
hours and a half. Before turning in I ordered coffee 
at 3.50 a.m., and told the guide and porter to be 
ready for a start at 4 a,m. 



122 



CHAPTER VI. 

OVER MONTE MORO BY MACUGNAGA TO PONTE GRANDE, 
AND DOMO D'OSSOLA 

Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine. — Goldsmith. 

September 6. — At 3.50 A.M. coffee was ready, but 
was told that it was not so with the guide and porter. 
On looking them up, I found them both in bed, and 
asleep. I was not quite unprepared for this, from 
something I had been told at Saas about the way in 
which my friend sometimes spent his evenings. But, 
having taken a kind of liking to him, I had replied 
that this would make no difference to me, so long as 
he was all right during the day. About that I was 
assured that I need entertain no doubt. The delay, 
however, caused on this occasion, by his inability to 
wake of himself at the appointed time, did not, as it 
happened, amount to much. After a gentle ascent of, 
if I recollect rightly, about forty minutes, and some- 
what beyond the Distel chalets , we came to the first 
snow. It might have been a quarter of a mile across. 
With nails in your boots, and an alpenstock in your 



OVER MONTE MORO TO DO MO H OS SOLA 123 



hand, this is almost as easy to walk upon as the path 
that brings you to it, only, of course, that you cannot 
walk upon it quite so quickly. Beyond this, the 
ascent is somewhat stiff up to the summit. Some- 
times it is on a ledge of gneiss, with a deep precipice 
down to the glacier-ravine on your left hand. Another 
snow-field also has to be crossed here, which lies at 
an angle of, perhaps, 25 0 or 30 0 . The summit of the 
pass is like a small crater a few yards across. Here 
my friend, who had been as brisk and talkative as 
heretofore since we started, called a halt for breakfast. 
The cold meat and bread were certainly of the driest, 
and that perhaps encouraged him in the idea that not 
they, but the liquid with which they were washed 
down, was the essential part of the repast. Young 
Andermatten, a name well known in these parts, was 
now carrying my sac. He had met us between the 
two snow-fields we had passed, and as my porter 
had some reason for wishing to return to Saas, he had 
undertaken to supply his place to Macugnaga. 

As soon as you leave the summit you begin to 
descend a ledge of very smooth gneiss, about six or 
eight feet wide. On your left is a precipice ; on 
your right a broken wall of rock. You go down this 
for about a hundred yards, and then get off it by a 
few projecting steps, which have been fixed in the 
face of the rock. This takes you on to some snow 
lying at a sharp incline. It would not do to slip on 



124 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



this ledge of gneiss ; and, at first, not being used to 
such paths, that is to say if it is your first pass, you 
think you must slip. But you take heart when you 
see your guide walking down it much the same as if 
he were walking on London pavement. He turns 
round to see what you are about, and to offer assist- 
ance ; but that you cannot accept. Still you are 
glad when it is done. The descent to Macugnaga is, 
throughout, rough and steep. Ascending it, and with 
the sun on your back — it faces the south — must be 
hard work. If it had been a Swiss mountain there 
would, long ago, have been a good horse-path made 
to the top. 

This is an old and easy pass. Ordinary lungs, 
ankles, and head, are all that it wants. It was known 
to, and used by, the Romans. It was for some time 
occupied by the Saracens, who left their name upon 
it, as they did names of their own on several peaks 
and places around it. 

As you trudge over the mountain, in the fresh 
morning air, accompanied by your guide and porter, 
and with your attention quickened to receive the im- 
pressions of the grandeur around you, which you know 
will hold a place among the most valued and abiding 
of your mental possessions, you feel as if you were 
really one of the lords of creation. This feeling 
would be a wee bit marred, if the eternal mountain 
had been presumptuously appropriated by some 



OVER MONTE MORO TO DO MO U OSS OLA 125 



mortal molecule, for then you might be troubled with 
apprehensions of disturbing, or of being thought 
likely to disturb, his ibexes and chamois. 

I made the Monte Rosa Hotel at Macugnaga at 
8.30; that is to say, in four hours from the Mattmark 
See, excluding the twenty minutes' halt in the little 
crateriform chamber on the top of the Moro. I now 
had a breakfast, which, by the grace of ' mine host/ 
bore a close resemblance to a dinner, for it consisted 
of a long succession of dishes. This did not come 
amiss to one who, having been up some time before 
the sun, had an appetite that took a deal of killing ; 
and ' mine host ' had also the grace to charge modestly 
for what he purveyed bountifully. I found that the 
inn of the Mattmark See was an off-hand house of 
his, under the management of his wife. He is besides 
by profession a guide. He must, therefore, be doubly 
disposed to regard with favour and sympathy those 
who do the Monte Moro. I found here a London 
member of the faculty, who was making Macugnaga 
his head-quarters for a part of his holiday ; and his 
fuller experiences of the house, and landlord, were all 
on the right side. The balcony of the hotel com- 
mands the best possible view of the upper ten 
thousand feet of Monte Rosa : its subterranean founda- 
tions — the remaining third of its height — are spread 
out beneath you. You are just at a good distance for 
taking in the whole of the visible structure — the 



126 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



height, the form, the ravines, the glacier, and the con- 
tiguous peaks, with the head of the valley for the 
foreground. It is a grand, varied, complete, impres- 
sive sight. 

At i P.M. left the Monte Rosa Hotel for Ponte 
Grande. The guide, who was now also porter, 
shouldered my sac with a jaunty air, and we started 
at a good pace. My new acquaintance of the hotel 
joined company for the first mile and a half. At 
parting we hoped that we should meet again at the 
Athenaeum. At this point you leave the path on 
terra firma, and take to a path, laid on a wooden 
platform, strewn with sand, which overhangs the 
brawling Anza. This platform road is curious, and 
well worth seeing. In some places it is supported 
by lofty pine poles, which must be fifty or sixty feet 
high. You hardly understand how support can be 
found for it in the sheer chasms it occasionally has 
to be carried along. I have somewhere read that the 
old Roman road along the bank of the Danube w r as in 
places constructed in this fashion, and that the holes 
cut in the rock, for the bearings of the king-posts 
and struts, are still visible. This of the Anza is very 
much out of repair. In some places there are gaps 
you must step, or jump, over. In others it has been 
entirely destroyed, and you must make a little detour 
to recover it. For a mile or two, or more, above 
Ceppo Morelli you quit it altogether, and take to a 



OVER MONTE MORO TO DO MO U OSS OLA 127 



rocky mule path, which might easily enough be very 
considerably improved, At Ceppo Morelli is a bridge 
of one long, slender, much-elevated arch, somewhat 
in the form a loop caterpillar assumes in walking. 
Here you return to the left bank ; and the carriage 
road of the Val Anzasca commences. Hitherto we 
had been walking at a good pace for a rough path ; 
but now the road, having become smooth, invited us 
to quicken our pace to near four miles an hour, The 
guide, who had already called two halts, now called 
them at shorter intervals. He was evidently breaking 
down. Still he was unwilling to lessen speed. We 
reached Ponte Grande in a little over four hours.. 
Here is what appeared to be a fairly good hotel 
Just before I turned in, the waitress came to inform 
me that my guide had ordered a carriage, in my 
name, for the next day. She suspected that all was 
not right. I asked her to have the carriage counter- 
ordered, as he was under contract to walk with me 
over the Simplon to Brieg ; and to tell him that I 
should be off at five o'clock in the morning. 

September 7. — Found that the guide's feet were so 
swollen that he was quite incapable of going any 
further. The way, I suppose, in which I had under- 
stood that he sometimes spent his evenings had been 
a bad preparation for continuous hard walking, in a 
valley with very little air, commanded all day by an 
unclouded sun, and with a dozen, or more, pounds on 



128 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



his back. I was now obliged to leave my sac, with 
instructions that it should be sent on to Domo 
D'Ossola by diligence ; and then started alone. To 
Pie de Mulera (7 J miles) there is an excellent carriage 
road. So far you are on the mountain side. From 
thence to Domo D'Ossola (about 7 miles more) the 
road is generally on the flat. There was a perfectly 
clear sky, and no air was stirring ; and so I found the 
latter part of my morning's tramp very warm. Under 
such conditions one might expect even a water- 
drinker's feet to swell. 

I was in Domo D'Ossola at 12 o'clock. Having 
breakfasted leisurely and looked over the newspapers 
in the reading-room of the hotel, I was ready for 
another ten or twelve miles ; and should have done 
this in the evening had I not thought it better to 
wait for my sac. As it was, I spent the afternoon 
and night at Domo. As I care little for towns, par- 
ticularly third or fourth-rate ones, and have seen 
enough of churches and hotels de ville, this was an 
unprofitable waste of time. I amused myself as well 
as I could with the arrival and departure of the dili- 
gences, and with the Italian aspect of things. The 
hotel was cheerless and lifeless. As soon as a dili- 
gence left, everyone about the place suddenly became 
invisible, just as if they had all sunk into the ground, 
or melted away into the air. Still, it may be the least 
unlively house, as things go, in a place so dismally 
doleful. 



VAL ANZASCA 



129 



To go back then to the valley of the Anza. As 
soon as you enter it at Macugnaga you see that you 
are among a more sprightly and joyous people ; and 
are struck with the contrasts between them and the 
homely Swiss on the other side of the mountains. 
They are better dressed, and with more attention to 
effect ; particularly the women with their white linen 
smocks, showing very white beneath the dark jacket, 
not untouched with colour — this is worn open and 
sleeveless ; and with their more gaudily-coloured ker- 
chiefs on their heads. The dress of the fairer part 
of creation in Switzerland is somewhat sombre. They 
make little use of colour, and appear to be attracted 
most by what will wear best ; and, if it may be 
written, will require least washing. The women in 
this valley have good eyes. They are not unaware 
of the advantage, and use them accordingly. Their 
complexion, too, is clear. That of the Swiss is, 
generally, somewhat cloudy. Their bearing and air 
are those of people who are of opinion that the best 
use of life is to enjoy it. The Swiss seem to regard 
life as if they were a little oppressed by its cares and 
labours. Perhaps the conditions of existence on their 
side of the mountains are so hard, that the people 
must take things seriously. One respects their labo- 
rious industry. There is a kind of manliness in their 
never-ending struggle against the niggardliness and 
severity of nature. This, and their forethought, one 

K 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



applauds, only regretting that so much toil should 
secure so little enjoyment ; and should have such 
humble issues. There is something that pleases, and 
attracts, in the smiles, and in the greater sense of 
enjoyment, of the light-hearted Italian. 

In the upper part of this valley German is still 
spoken. Here also it is observable that not nearly so 
much has been done, as on the Swiss side, to reclaim 
and irrigate the land. You wish to know whether 
this is at all attributable to a difference in the distri- 
bution and tenure of landed property. You pass 
several mines : some of gold. The abundance and 
size of the chesnut-trees are a new feature. You 
contrast their freely-spreading branches and noble 
foliage with the formal and gloomy pines, of whose 
society you have lately had much. 



l 3 l 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE SIMPLON 

Julius Caesar also left behind him a treatise in two books on Analogy 
(a department of grammar)-, which he composed while crossing the 
Alps. — Suetonius. 

September 8. — Last night I had told the head- 
waiter that I must be off at 5 A.M., and he had replied 
that it was impossible : that at that hour no one in 
the hotel would be up ; that coffee could not be pre- 
pared before six. I, however, gained my point by- 
asking him to set the coffee for me overnight ; telling 
him that I would take it in the morning cold. This 
proposal appeared to him so uncivilised, that he was 
confounded by its enormity, and offered no further 
resistance. I then paid the bill ; and was off this 
morning at the desired time. 

As my sac had not arrived from Ponte Grande, I 
left written instructions that, when it turned up — it was 
due last evening — it should be sent on to Brieg. 
Thus I had gained nothing by the afternoon I had 
lost. At Ponte Grande, on the morning after the 

K2 



132 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



break-down of my own porter-guide, it was evident 
that the master of the hotel had conceived the very 
natural idea of persuading me to take one of his 
people in that double capacity, or, that failing, to take 
a carriage. In resentment of this, I had contented 
myself with putting into my pocket what I should 
want most during the two following days ; and had 
left the bag, and the rest of what was in it, to chance. 
I now saw the absurdity of what I had done ; for 
why, in such a matter, should I have taken into con- 
sideration, the landlord's scheming, or anything in the 
world, except my own convenience ? My bag, as 
might have been expected, did not turn up at Brieg. 
This made me still more conscious of my absurdity. 
Eventually, however, by the aid of the telegraph and 
post-office, I recovered it at Interlaken. This I felt I 
had not deserved. 

As you begin to ascend the Simplon, perhaps you 
will be thinking — at all events you have read remarks 
of the kind often enough to be reminded of them now — 
that its road is a line of masonry, carried for forty- 
four miles over mountains, and through storm and 
avalanche-swept ravines ; that it is one of the mighty 
works by which man has triumphed over a great ob- 
stacle, which nature had placed in his path ; that it was 
constructed for purposes of war and rapine, and for 
the aggrandizement of an individual, but is now used 
for the purposes of peace, and for the friendly inter- 



THE SIMPLON 



^33 



course of nations ; and that the barrier, which it has 
practically removed, had its use in those times when 
it was shielding nascent civilisation from northern bar- 
barism. If so, you will not altogether regret that you 
are on foot, and alone. This will give you an oppor- 
tunity for conferring, without irrelevant interruptions, 
with the genius loci, and allow the trains of thought it 
brings you to unfold themselves, as they will, in your 
mind : and so, probably, you will feel no want of a 
vehiculum, either literally, or in the metaphorical sense, 
in which the proverb says the bonus amicus is a sub- 
stitute for it. 

This day's walk was very diversified. It began 
with level ground ; some of it productive, and well 
cultivated ; some covered with the coarse shingle the 
torrent stream, which passes through it, has brought 
down from the mountains. The ascent then com- 
menced through a region of chesnuts and trellised 
vines. After that came the zone of pines, sometimes 
lost, and again recovered. At last the scene was 
compounded of the naked mountain side, the savage 
ravine, and the blustering torrent, overtopped with 
rugged crags ; these at times capped with snow, and 
with glaciers between. But even to the summit, as 
you follow the road, all is not desolation ; for wherever 
the soil, formed by the weathering of the rock, could 
be retained, your eye will rest on some little expanse 
of green turf ; or, if the situation be too exposed, and 



134 A MONTH IN S WITZERLA A D 



the soil too poor and shallow for turf, it will be clad 
in the sober mantle of humble Alpine plants. 

As I walked along I often noticed how the surface 
of the fragments of rock lying in the torrent, and 
their side looking up the stream, were being worn 
away ; while the side looking down, and its upper 
angle, remained quite unworn. This teaches how the 
solid rock itself, at the bottom of the torrent, that is 
to say how its channel, is always being abraded ; 
which means being lowered. While this is going on 
below, the frosts, and storms, and earthquakes are, at 
the same time, bringing down the rocks from above. 
This accounts for the top of the valley, vertically, 
being very much wider than the bottom. If there 
had been no frosts, and storms, and earthquakes, the 
torrent would now be running in a perfectly perpen- 
dicular-sided trough, of the same depth as the existing 
valley — but, then, there would be no valley, only a 
trough. The valley is wider at the top than at the 
bottom, because the widening action of frost, storms, 
and earthquakes has been going on at the top for 
tens of thousands of years ; while it has been going on 
lower down, with very much less force, only for some 
hundreds of years. You observe the contrast between 
the calm majesty of the everlasting mountains and 
the brawling impatience of the insignificant torrent. 
The torrent, however, has already set its mark on the 
mountains ; and you see is surely, though slowly, 



'THE SIMPLON 



135 



having the best of it. It works, and works incessantly 
day and night ; winter and summer ; fair weather and 
foul. Everything that occurs aids it. The mountain 
merely stands still to be kicked to death by grass- 
hoppers. But the end of the conflict will be their 
mutual destruction. The torrent will so far carry 
away the mountain, that the mountain will no longer 
be able to feed the torrent. Probably, in the ages 
preceding the torrent, a glacier, availing itself of 
some aboriginal facilities in the lay of the ground, 
commenced the work of excavation, which its suc- 
cessor, the torrent, took up, and has since continued 
in the line thus prepared for it. 

La belle horreitr of the gorge of Gondo, its sheer, 
adamantine, mountain-high precipices, its terrific 
chasms, its overhanging rocks, its raging torrent, its 
rugged peaks against the sky, make it the great 
sight of the ascent. Two bits interested me especially 
at the moment, and have impressed themselves on my 
mind more distinctly than the rest. The first was the 
Fall of the Frosinone. Crashing and roaring, it leaps 
down from the mountain, a dozen yards or so from 
the road, under which it passes, beneath a most 
audaciously conceived and executed bridge, and, im- 
mediately, on your left, rushes into the torrent of the 
Gorge. The road, at once, enters the long tunnel of 
the Gondo, upon which the bridge abuts. Here is an 
unparalleled combination of extraordinary and stirring 



136 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



objects. The other is a cascade, a little way off, of a 
character, in every particular, the opposite of that of 
the Fall of the Frosinone. It is on the other side of 
the Gorge. Here there is no ruggedness in the rock. 
The cleavage of nature has left it, from top to 
bottom, with a polished surface. Over this almost 
perpendicular face of the mountain the water glides 
down so smoothly and so noiselessly that, at night, 
you would pass it without being aware of the exist- 
ence of the cascade. The water is as smooth as the 
rock, and so transparent that you everywhere see the 
rock through it. It is only, everywhere, equally 
marked with a delicate network of lines, and bars, 
of white foam. The effect is precisely that of an 
endless broad band of lace, rapidly and everlastingly, 
drawn down the side of the mountain. 

The day was bright and warm ; and the walk, 
being all the while against the collar, brought one 
into the category of thirsty souls. I must have drunk, 
I believe, twenty times at the little runnels that 
crossed the road. However heated you may be, and 
however cold the water, no bad consequences appear 
to ensue. At 12.30 P.M. I got to the village of 
Simplon. Here I breakfasted, or dined, for under the 
circumstances the meal was as much breakfast as 
dinner ; or, rather, it was both in one. As I was 
now just twenty-two miles from Domo D'Ossola, 
that is just half way to Brieg, I had thought of 



THE SIMPLON 137 



sleeping here. Finding the house, however, in pos- 
session of a company of strolling Italian players, whose 
noise and childishness were insufferable, I left the 
hotel — uninviting enough of itself from the slovenly, 
dirty look of everything about it ; and made for the 
Hospice, five miles further on. I found it in a 
sheltered, green depression, on the very summit of 
the pass. It is a large rectangular massive building, 
well able to set at defiance even an Alpine winter 
storm. As it has no stabling, it takes in only those 
who come on foot. 

The Brother, who showed me to my berth, was very 
young and very good-natured. He brought to me in 
my room all that I wanted, instead of obliging me 
to go to the refectory for my supper, where, as it 
happened, I should have met again the Italian players 
I had run away from some hours before ; for they 
had followed me on to the Hospice. I might have 
guessed that they would not have stayed at the inn. 
Perhaps my alpenstock, and very dusty feet, had 
some weight with the good man. 

September 9. — Was up, and out of my room at 5 A.M. 
Found no one stirring in the Hospice but a lad and a 
girl. Both appeared to be about fourteen years of 
age. For an early traveller to begin the day with, 
there was plenty of coffee and milk, and of bread 
and butter, in my room ; the remains of the bountiful 
refection of yesterday evening. On my asking the 



138 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



young people where I was to find some one to whom 
I might make an acknowledgment for the hospitality 
I had received, I was told that it was the custom for 
the visitors to make their offerings in the chapel, 
putting them in a basin which was shown me behind 
the door. I left them in the chapel, discussing the 
amount I had deposited. Having complied with this 
ceremony, I started for Brieg. As the road was good, 
and the whole of it downhill, I walked at a good 
pace, and had completed the sixteen miles at 9.15. 
There is a short cut by which you may be saved the 
long detour by Berisal, and lessen the distance, as 
the books say, though I do not believe the books upon 
this point, to the amount of five miles. I did not look 
for this short cut, for fear that my attempting to take it 
might issue in a loss of time. When you don't know 
the country, the short cut often proves the longest 
way. 

Soon after commencing the descent you come to 
the galleries, partly excavated in the rock, and partly 
formed of very massive masonry, through which the 
road is carried along the flank of the Monte Leone, 
and across the gorge of Schalbet These galleries, 
as well as the Houses of Refuge and the Hospice, 
shelter the traveller from the storms and avalanches, 
which are frequent in this part of the pass. The 
great Kaltenwasser glacier of Monte Leone hangs 
over them ; and the torrent from it slips over the 



THE SIMPLON 



139 



roof of one of the galleries. To find yourself in this 
way beneath an Alpine torrent^ and to look into it, as 
it dashes by, through an opening in the side of the 
galleries, will give to some a new sensation. This is 
the head-water of the Saltine, which joins the Rhone 
at Brieg. As you pass along this part of the road 
you have before you the terrific forces, and savagery, 
of Alpine nature ; but you reflect that civilised man 
has been able, if not to overcome them, yet at all 
events to protect himself from them. You think 
that it is something to be a man ; or, with less of 
personal feeling, that civilisation has endowed him 
with much power. These scenes stir the mind. They 
enlarge thought, and strengthen wilL Below Berisal 
the torrent of the Gauter, an affluent of the Saltine, 
is crossed by a massive stone bridge. This is so 
lofty that it appears a light and airy structure ; still it 
possesses what it requires, a great deal of strength, to 
enable it to resist the blasts created by the falling 
avalanches, which are frequent in this neighbourhood. 
You are surprised at coming so soon in sight of Brieg, 
and of the valley of the Rhone. You see that you 
have now completely surmounted the great barrier 
nature interposed between her darling Italy, where 
you were yesterday morning, and the hardy North, of 
which you rejoice to be a child. Perhaps you will 
think that it was not ill done that you crossed it on 
foot. 



140 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BRIEG — THROUGH THE UPPER RHONE VALLEY BY CHAR TO 
THE RHONE GLACIER — HOTEL DU GLACIER DU RHONE 

-Happy the man whose wish and care 

A few paternal acres bound ; 
Content to breathe his native air 

On his own ground. 

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, 

Whose flocks supply him with attire ; 
-Whose trees in summer yield him shade, 
In winter fire. — Pope. 

My first hour at Brieg was spent in finding the single 
barber of the place. He was an idle fellow ; and, 
having it all his own way, w T as, as it appeared, in the 
habit of devoting his mornings to society and amuse- 
ment. His evenings, also, we may suppose, were not 
allowed, like his business, to run entirely to waste. 
At last by despatching three little boys, in different 
directions, to search for him, the finder to be re- 
warded with half a franc, I succeeded in bringing him 
back to his razors : mine were in the sac I had lost 
sight of through having lost sight of self. I had 



BRIEG 



breakfasted ; had had a little talk with two or three 
people in the hotel ; had looked over the place — no 
great labour, but the conclusion to which the inspec- 
tion brought me was that things appear to be better 
organised in it, and life to be pitched at a higher level, 
than in places of equal smallness amongst ourselves ; 
had traced the Saltine down to its junction with the 
Rhone ; had had some talk with a woman who was 
regulating the irrigation of a meadow ; and had, 
having thus exhausted everything, local, just retired to 
my room with a cigar and a book, when the blue boy 
burst open the door to report himself, like the armies 
of the old Romans, before he had been expected. 
When I had left Saas, the calculation had been that 
my wife and he would not reach Brieg till the evening 
of this day ; and that that might also be the time of 
my own arrival. We were both before our time. In 
such calculations, however, it is wise to allow some 
margin for ' the unforeseen,' and for the imperfections 
and uncertainties of the human machine. As it 
happened, had I not lost an afternoon at Domo 
D'Ossola — I shall for the future in all such delibe- 
rations, instinctively, eliminate irrelevant matter — I 
should have slept in Brieg last night ; though, indeed, 
under the circumstances, there would have been in 
that no particular gain. 

During my absence my wife, and the little man, 
had made two excursions; one to the Trift glacier 



142 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



with young Andermatten for guide — the youth who 
in the first hours of the same day had carried my sac 
into Macugnaga, and had then forthwith returned 
to Saas ; and the other, without a guide, to the 
Mattmark See. Knowing that their thoughts were 
turned in this direction, I had sent them a note 
from the Mattmark See, pencilled on the night of 
the 5th, begging them not to attempt it, as the road 
was quite too rough and steep, in the latter part, for 
a child who had shown no great capacity lor moun- 
taineering. They did not get my note till they were 
on the way. My prudence, however, was no match 
for their enterprise. They managed to get to the 
Mattmark See Hotel ; and, after dinner, to return 
the same evening to Saas. As the little man was not 
ten years old, I accept the seven hours they were on 
foot as an augury of future endurance. I had almost 
thought, but I ought to have known better, that my 
note would have deterred them from going ; and so, 
as I tramped along to Ponte Grande, I had not 
pictured them to myself, as now I did, toiling up the 
open mountain, and trudging along the lonely shore 
of the dark Mattmark See, in the very centre of the 
Alpine world, without another breathing thing in sight. 

On the morning of this day (the 9th) my wife had 
walked from Saas to Visp, fourteen miles. The little 
boy had ridden. From Visp to Brieg they had come 
on in the diligence. 



UPPER RHONE VALLE Y 



H3 



September 10. — As it was thirty miles of, we may- 
call it, high road, and that not particularly interesting, 
from Brieg to the Rhone glacier, for which we were 
bound, we took a voiture for the day. It was a three- 
horse affair. The driver was an ill-conditioned fellow ; 
but not without some redeeming qualities, for he was 
the only one of his kind we met with throughout our 
excursion ; and in the afternoon, when bonne mam had 
become the uppermost thought in what mind he had, 
he showed some capacity for the rudiments of civili- 
sation. At Viesch he insisted on stopping for two 
hours ; two hours that were an age, as there was no- 
thing to see there, and nothing that we could do, 
having just breakfasted at Brieg. It was an aggrava- 
tion to see at least a dozen one-horse vehicles pass by 
without one of them halting. At Munster we stopped 
again, for an hour and a half: but that was for 
dinner. 

This was the first time I had been on wheels since 
getting upon my own legs at Visp, on August 29. If 
we had had time enough, it would have been better 
to have walked this morning to the Belle Alp, giving 
to it one day ; then on to the Eggischhorn, for the great 
Aletsch glacier ; two days more : and thus reaching 
the Rhone glacier on the fourth day. But as we 
could hardly have spared the time for this, we were 
satisfied with what we did. To refuse to take a 
carriage on a carriage road, when much time is saved 



144 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



by taking it, and every object along the road can be 
seen as well from a carriage as on foot, is the pedantry 
of pedestrianism, which sacrifices the substance of 
one's object for useless consistency. 

In the upper part of the Rhone valley there are 
considerable expanses of good grass land, particu- 
larly about Munster ; and the villages are numerous, 
and close together. Each of these villages, as seen 
from a little distance, is a cluster of chalets, without 
any visible internal spaces, and without any apparent 
differences in their dimensions, or structure. They 
have no suburbs ; there is no shading off ; the bright 
green meadow is not gradually lost in the dark brown 
village. The houses do not gradually thin out in the 
fields. There are no fields ; no detached houses. 
There is nothing but the expanse of grass, and these 
clusters of chalets, each like a piece of honeycomb laid 
upon it ; and as distinct from each other as so many 
communities of bees. Each village looks as if it were 
something that had dropped from heaven upon the 
grass ; or like a compact, homogeneous excrescence 
upon the grass — a kind of Brobdingnagian fungus. 
There is, however, one exception to the general uni- 
formity of the excrescence, and that is the church tower. 
It stands above the rest, just as its shaft would, if the 
Brobdingnagian fungus were turned upside down. 

Here you have, apparently without disturbing ele- 
ments, as perfect a picture, as could now be seen, of 



UPPER RHONE VALLEY 



H5 



the old rationale of religion ; that it is a power among 
men, equally above all, interpreting to all their moral 
nature, and proclaiming the interpretation to all with 
an authoritative voice ; and obliging all, by its constant 
authoritative iteration, to receive the proclamation ; 
and to allow its reception to form within themselves, 
even if they were such as by nature would have been 
without conscience, the ideas and sentiments requisite 
for society. You see that this Arcadian application 
of the function of religion may have been completely, 
and undisturbedly realised, in times past, in such 
isolated and self-contained villages ; and that you are 
at the moment looking upon one in which it is still 
being realised to some extent. But you, who belong 
to the outside world, and know it, too ; its large cities, 
its wealth, its poverty, its estranged classes, its mental 
activity, its social and controversial battle-shouts, its 
paeans of short-lived triumph, its cries of agonising 
defeat, its individualism, are aware that the day for 
such an exhibition of religion is gone by. Your 
religion, if you are religious, will be in the form, and 
after the kind, needed now in that outside world. It 
will have stronger roots, that seek their nutriment at 
greater distances ; a firmer knit stem,, such as a tree 
will have that has grown up in the open, exposed to 
many gales ; and more wide-spreading branches, such 
as those far-travelling roots, and that firm-knit stem, 
can alone support. And this will enable you to under- 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



stand, and, if you do understand, will save you from 
despising, the religion of the Alpine village before 
you : for you will find that it is the same as your own, 
only in embryo. 

At Oberwald, three and a half miles from the 
Rhone glacier, the road leaves the grassy valley, and 
begins to ascend the zig-zags on the mountain-side. 
We here found the inclination to leave the carriage, 
and walk, irresistible. This road, which is carried 
over the Furca Pass to Andermatt, is a grand achieve- 
ment, for which the country, and those who travel in 
it, have to thank the modern, more centralised and 
democratised government. To it also their thanks are 
due for the new coinage, the most simple in the world, 
whereas the old cantonal coinages it superseded were 
the most confusing, and the worst ; for the postal ar- 
rangements, which are very good ; for the telegraph ; 
and even for the railways. And, furthermore it must be 
credited with many advances, and improvements, that 
have been made in the Swiss system of education. 

The Rhone glacier is a broad and grand river of 
ice. As it descends from the mountains on a rapid 
incline you see a great deal of it from below, and are 
disposed to regard it as worthy to be the parent of a 
great historic river. The Rhone, however, itself issues 
from it, at present, in a very feeble and disappointing 
fashion. It slips out from beneath the ice so quietly, 
and inconspicuously, that you might pass by it, as 



HOTEL DU GLACIER DU RHONE 



147 



doubtless many do, without observing it. It steals off, 
as if it were ashamed of its parentage ; of which, 
rather, it might well be proud. 

A word about the Hotel du Glacier du Rhone. 
It has plenty of pretension ; but I never passed a 
night in a house I was so glad to leave in the morning. 
Nowhere did one ever meet with such a plague of 
flies, flies so swarming, and so persecuting ; and no- 
where did one ever meet with such revolting stenches. 
What produces the stenches is what produces the 
flies ; that is want of drainage, and the non-removal 
of unclean accumulations. At first, on account of the 
stench which pervaded the gallery — it was that of the 
first and chief floor, I refused to take the room I was 
shown to ; and only, after a time, consented on the 
assurance that this matter could, and should be set 
right. This assurance was utterly fallacious; for, 
though I kept my window wide open, from the time I 
entered the room till I left it, I soon sickened, and 
was afflicted with uninterrupted nausea throughout the 
whole night. Want of proper drainage, the cause of 
these horrors, is very common in Swiss hotels. Their 
pretentious character, which, with many thoughtless 
people, atones for much, ought, on the contrary, to 
intensify one's sense of such shameful neglect. The 
larger the house^ the larger are the gains of the 
landlord, and the greater^ the number of people ex- 
posed to the mischief. I do not at all join in the cry 



1 48 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



against the rise in the charges of the monster hotels 
of Southern Switzerland. Landlords, like other people, 
have a right to charge what they can get, when the 
commodity they deal in is much in demand. But, as 
their charges are certainly remunerative, there can be 
no reason for forbearing to denounce manifest and dis- 
graceful disregard of necessary sanitary arrangements. 
I heard the next morning from one, who spoke from 
that day's personal experience, that matters were no 
better at the neighbouring hotel of the Grimsel Hos- 
pice. Strange is it that man should be so careless 
about poisoning the very air nature has made so 
pure ! 



149 



CHAPTER IX. 

WALK OVER THE GRIMSEL BY THE AAR VALLEY, HELLE PLATTE, 
FALLS OF HANDECK, TO MEIRINGEN 

These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good ; 

Almighty, Thine this universal frame, 

Thus wondrous fair ; Thyself how wondrous, then ! 

Unspeakable, Who sitt'st above the heavens 

To us invisible, or dimly seen 

In these Thy lowest works. — Milton. 

September n, — We were off at 6 A.M. for a long 
day over the Grimsel Pass to Meiringen. As usual, 
my wife and I on foot, and the little man on horse- 
back. You begin the ascent of the mountain imme- 
diately from the hotel. It is stiff walking all the way 
to the top, which is reached in about an hour. The 
height above the sea is somewhat more than 7,000 
feet. On the side of the mountain the most con- 
spicuous plant is the Rhododendron, the rose of the 
Alps. On the summit of the pass is a dark tarn. 
The mephitic Hospice, about three fourths of a mile 
off, is 700 feet below. Soon after you begin the descent 
you come upon indications of former glacier action in 



i5o A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

polished slabs of gneiss all around you. On your 
right is a rugged glacier, among still more rugged 
pinnacles of rock. Before you and to the left, is a 
world of snowy mountains, of which you catch some 
glimpses. After a few yards of descent from the 
Hospice the path strikes the Aar, fresh from its exit 
from the upper and lower Aar glaciers. It then turns 
to the right along the margin of the torrent : the 
torrent and the path passing side by side through a 
narrow defile, overtopped, right and left, with pre- 
cipitous mountains. After a time the path leaves the 
margin of the torrent, having first been carried over 
it by a narrow stone bridge. Everywhere you find 
indications of the great height to which the glaciers 
reached in some remote epoch. Among these are 
several instances of deep horizontal lines, graven along 
the apparently perpendicular face of the mountain, at 
a height of even 2,000 feet above the valley. In a 
place called Helle Platte, or the Open Plain, the path 
is carried over what was formerly the bed of the 
glacier ; the gneiss still retaining the polish that was 
given to its surface so many millenniums ago. This 
extends for about a quarter of a mile, the interstices, 
between the mighty slabs of gneiss being filled with 
fringes and patches of stunted Rhododendrons, and of 
the Pinus Pumilio, a spreading dwarf pine, that does not 
reach more than three or four feet from the ground ; 
but which, notwithstanding its diminutive size, con- 



THE GRIMSEL 



1 5.1 



veys to you, far more impressively than its lofty con- 
geners, the idea of great age. This scene surrounded 
by naked mountain masses, as rugged as adamantine, 
stirs the mind deeply. The effect culminates as you 
/pass the bridge, beneath which the torrent of the Aar 
/ roars and dashes along its rock-impeded channel. No 
animal life is seen, with the one exception of a multi- 
tude of butterflies, glancing to and fro in the clear 
warm sunshine, like winged flowers. Your thought 
is interested by the contrast between their feeble fra- 
gile beauty and the force and savagery of surrounding 
nature. 

The way in which I saw that the Aar had cut 
its channel through the gneiss suggested to me the 
inquiry, whether what had enabled it to do this was 
not the fact that the pebbles and broken rock the 
torrent brought down were gneiss, so that it was gneiss 
which it had to dash against the sides and bottom of 
its channel. Perhaps torrent-borne fragments of gneiss 
may widen and deepen a gneiss channel as effectually 
as fragments of lime-stone may a lime-stone channel. 

At eleven miles from the Rhone glacier you 
reach Handeck : a small expanse of greenest Alpine 
meadow, intermixed with pine-forest, and surrounded 
with dark craggy mountains. Here we called a halt 
for luncheon, and a cigar. It was a bright, airy day ; 
one to be for ever remembered. Many travellers 
came and went ; some facing up, some down the pass. 



152 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



Fortunately this charming spot has not yet been dis- 
figured by a staring stone hotel. The suave landlord, 
and expectant porter, have not yet invaded it. But 
I am afraid that they cannot be far off. At all events 
for the present, may it long remain so ! you have the 
wooden chalet, with its low panelled reception room, 
innocent of gilding and of paint ; the green rock- 
strewn turf coming up to the door ; and the bench 
along the wall outside. You can here get a mutton 
chop that has not been first passed through a bath to 
make potage for yesterday's visitors, and then, for you, 
had its impoverishment thinly disguised by having 
been dipped into a nondescript satice piquante. 

This charming halting-place is enriched with far 
the best waterfall in Switzerland — the Fall of the 
Handeck. The Staubbach, Byron's magniloquence 
nevertheless, and the rest of them, are only overflows 
of house-gutters. There, where they are, just at the 
first stage of the watershed of Europe, they can be 
accepted as being very much what they ought to be ; 
but one cannot be impressed with them as waterfalls. 
Here, however, is something of quite a different kind: 
not so much from the volume of the falling water, as 
from its character, and the point of view from which 
it is seen. Two or three hundred yards below the 
chalet the Aar is chafing along its clean rock-channel, 
strewn with boulders as large as houses ; on a sudden 
it takes a leap, of about two hundred feet, into a dark, 



FALLS OF THE HANDECK 



153 



appalling, iron-bound chasm. Precisely at the point, 
where it takes this leap, the Handeck, coming bluster- 
ing down on the left, at a right angle to the Aar, 
takes the same leap. The two cataracts are mingled 
together, midway in the chasm. A wooden bridge 
has been thrown over the falls. You stand upon this, 
and see the hurrying torrents dashing themselves into 
the deep chasm below you. You are half stunned by 
their angry roar. You observe that they have no power 
to undermine, and wear away, the granite against 
which they are dashing, and breaking themselves. 
The frail bridge vibrates under your feet. Fortunately 
you are looking down the fall instead of up, and this, 
by engendering an irrational sense of the possibility 
of your slipping into it, heightens the effect For 
some hours about midday — we were there at that 
time — it is crowned with the prismatic bow. 

Here my wife took a horse for the rest of the day p 
being too ill of the Hotel du Glacier du Rhone to walk 
any further. After some miles the savage character 
of the scenery began to relent. This mitigation went 
on increasing, till at last we found ourselves crossing 
the emerald meadows of Guttanen — a village of chalets. 
Next came the little town of Imhof. Here an hotel, 
and a brewery, a good road, and the slackened pace 
of the Aar made it evident that we were out of the 
mountains ; and the plain at Meiringen was soon 
reached. This was a walk of about twenty-six miles, 



*54 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



As all the hard work came in the first hour, it was a 
very much easier day than the twenty-seven miles up 
the southern side of the Simplon. 

As we were in Meiringen by 4.20 P.M., there was 
time for a walk up the hill, close to the hotel, to see 
the Falls of the Reichenbach. I was glad to find the 
little man ready to accompany me, for he had been 
so silent all day that I had been thinking he was 
fatigued, or not well. When we had got some way 
up the hill we met a Frenchman coming down, who 
told us that a toll would soon be levied upon us ; his 
comment upon the fact being that we should have to 
pay for looking at the mountains, if it could in any 
way be managed. Regarding this toll as apiece of ex- 
tortion, and not at all caring to see the fall, we returned 
to the hotel. If I had thought it really worth going 
to see, I should, acting on the wisdom I had pur- 
chased at Ponte Grande, have eliminated from con- 
sideration, though perhaps with a growl, the mean- 
ness and rapacity of the demand, as irrelevant matter, 
and have gone on ; but it was getting late, and we 
thought we had seen enough of the fall from the road 
as we were entering Meiringen. 



155 



CHAPTER X. 

CHAR TO INTERLAKEN — WALK OVER THE WENGERN ALP 
TO GRINDELWALD 

I love not man the less, but nature more 
From these our interviews. — Byron. 

September 1 2.— This morning we went by char from 
Meiringen to Interlaken, along the northern side of the 
Lake of Brienz. Again, if we had had time, it would 
have been better to have walked along the southern 
side, putting up for the night at Giesbach. While 
stopping at the town of Brienz to bait the horse, we 
visited some of the wood-carving shops, in one of 
which we found a school for indoctrinating children 
in the mysteries, not of the three R's, but of this 
trade, which is the great industry of the place : every- 
body here being engaged in it. The three main 
staples of Southern Switzerland are this wood-carving, 
cheese-making, and hotel-keeping. With the latter 
we must connect the dependent employments of the 
guides and porters, and of those who let out horses 
and carriages. I know not how much of the cheese 



156 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

is sent out of the country in exchange for foreign com- 
modities, but pretty nearly the whole of the carved 
wood, and of the hotel accommodation, is exchanged 
for foreign cash. 

This morning I witnessed the following scene. A 
practical man — I took him for one, who had struck 
oil — was leaving the hotel. A porter, assuming an 
expectant air, takes up a position at the door of the 
hotel. The practical man addresses him in a firm 
tone, ' Now, sir, tell me everything, you have done 
for me beyond your duty to the hotel/ A look of 
blankness comes over the porter's face, and he steps 
aside. The practical man, with the look of one who 
has discharged a lofty duty, steps into his carriage. I 
do not record this for imitation. 

Interlaken, which we reached early in the day, is a 
town of hotels and pensions. We were at The Jungfrau, 
which commands an excellent view of the famous 
mountain from which it takes its name. The view 
from this point is much improved by its comprising 
two intermediate distances in two ranges of hills, 
which do not at all interfere with the dominant 
object, but rather set off to advantage its snowy 
summits and flanks. The Jungfraublick, a large new 
hotel, on a spur of the nearest hill, is better situated, 
for it is out of the town ; and, being elevated above 
the lakes, commands several good views. The ma- 
jority of the visitors at our hotel were Germans : 



THE WENGERN ALP 157 

quiet, earnest, and methodical, they appeared to be 
regarding travelling, sight-seeing, and life itself, scien- 
tifically. 

Interlaken, being situated on low ground, between 
two high ranges of mountains, at no great distance 
from each other, is, on a quiet sunny day, a very oven 
for heat. It has, however, in its main street some 
very umbrageous lofty w r alnut-trees. They are the 
survivors of what was once, and not many years ago, 
a grand unbroken avenue. 

September 13. — Started early in a carriage for 
Lauterbrunnen, where we left it, with orders that it 
should be taken round to Grindelwald, there to be 
ready for us the next morning. At Lauterbrunnen 
we put the blue boy on horseback, and began the 
ascent of the Wengern Alp. People go up this moun- 
tain for the purpose of getting the most accessible, 
nearest, and best view of the Jungfrau, Monch, and 
Eiger. As you turn to the left to ascend the moun- 
tain, you regret that you are not going up the valley, 
which you see would lead you up among glaciers and 
snowy peaks ; or that you are not taking the path to 
the right, which you see would carry you over, and 
above the Staubbach, and you know would give you 
grand views of the snow-world. The path you are 
taking you take in faith, for it does not, from what is 
in sight, give any indications of what is in store for 
you ; before, however, the day is done, you will have 



158 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



reason enough for being satisfied with the choice you 
had made ; or which, perhaps, had been made for you. 

At first the ascent is very stiff, and a good test of 
lungs and legs. This lasts for about an hour. Then 
comes a reach of easy work among upland meadows 
and forest. The work, however, again stiffens ; but 
one is cheered by the nearness of the Jungfrau, and, 
occasionally, by the thunder of an avalanche, falling 
from its sides. You are now above the forest, and on 
the coarse sedgy turf ; and, if you please, you may 
sit down, and light your cigar, giving as your reason, 
that you wish to contemplate the view, and listen to 
the avalanches. It would, however, be better to go 
on at once to the hotel, which is not far off. This 
was what we were virtuous enough to do. The ascent 
occupied a little under four hours. We had luncheon 
at the hotel. It is on the edge of the ravine, on the 
opposite side of which rises, almost perpendicularly, 
the mighty Jungfrau. Though it must be two miles 
off, it seems so near that you fancy you might almost 
touch it with your hand. The dark, slate-coloured 
rock, and the snow, are in excellent contrast. The 
vast chasm below you, and the cold, hard, silent cliffs 
before you, the silence frequently broken on bright, 
warm days — and the day we were there was as bright 
and warm as could be — by the reverberation of the 
falling avalanches — there are no small, or insignificant 
objects in sight to mar the effect — are the elements of 



GRINDELWALD 



159 



an Alpine scene you are glad to think you will carry 
away impressed on your memory. You are now con- 
tent that the path on the right, up to Miirren, has been 
left for another day. As you w r atch the avalanches 
gliding down the ravines, and shot over the precipices, 
in streams of white dust, for the first fall or two shiver 
them into minute fragments, you are puzzled to know 
what it is that makes the thunder — what the noise is 
all about, the process being so smooth and regular. 

We allowed ourselves an hour and a half for mental 
photography and for luncheon — mine was a basin 
of rice-water, for I had not yet recovered from the 
Hotel du Glacier du Rhone. We then again took up 
our staves, and set our faces towards Grindelwald. 
In half an hour from our inn, we came to a second, 
on the summit of the Col. The descent immediately 
commences. This is not nearly so steep as the ascent 
we had just accomplished. It requires three hours. 
The path passes through the forest of death-struck 
pines Byron mentions in his journal. Not many re- 
main. Of these some are quite, some are almost dead. 
It was composed of the Pinus Cembra. The malady 
which is destroying it may perhaps have been en- 
gendered by a local change of climate ; or some other 
circumstance may have prevented the young plants 
from establishing themselves ; as, for instance, want 
of shelter, from too much of the forest having been 
cut at the same time. I mention this because I 



i6o A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



observed in exposed situations in the Rocky Mountains 
- — it was so above Nevada City, on the road to George- 
town — wherever the forest had been entirely cleared 
away, the young pines came up in myriads, but all 
died off, either withered by the droughts of summer, 
or by the bleak winds of winter : of course neither of 
these causes could have afflicted the tender nurselings, 
had the old forest been standing. 

The descent, like that to Virgil's Avernus, is easy, 
but, unlike that into the Vale of Years, has a charming 
prospect ; for the valley of Grindelwald, with its 
meadows, corn-fields, and chalets, is all spread out 
before you, like a map. It is a sight which awakens 
thought and touches the heart. You see that a good 
breadth of land has been reclaimed, where nature was 
so hard and adverse. How much labour has been 
expended in burying the stones, and bringing the soil 
to the surface, and in irrigating those many, now 
bright, smooth meadows ! How much thought and 
care is, day by day, bestowed on every little plot of 
that corn and garden ground, in the hope of getting 
a sufficiency of the many things that will be needed 
in the long winter ! How much talk is there, every 
evening, in every household, about the way in 
which things are going on, and about what has to 
be done ! A shoulder-basket must now be made 
for little Victor, and little tasks must be found for 
him, proportioned to his little strength, that he 
may, betimes, learn to labour ; and something must 



GRINDELWALD 



161 



be found, too, for the old grandame to do, that she 
may not come to feel that she is only burdensome. 
Some garden or dairy product, a little better than 
common, they may have in their humble stores, must 
be reserved for the fete, now not far off. Wilhelm, 
who many a mother in the valley wishes may be her 
son-in-law, and who of late has been more thoughtful 
than was his wont, hearing the fete mentioned, is re- 
minded of the edelweiss he had gone in search of, and 
found on the Eiger, that he may have its tell-tale 
flower, on that day when all hearts will be glad and 
open, to offer to Adeline. I suppose the fat Vale of 
Aylesbury, where purple and fine linen are not want- 
ing, and there is sumptuous fare every day, has its 
poetry ; but so, also, has the hard-won valley of 
Grindelwald, where home-spun is not unknown, and 
every man eats the bread of carefulness. 

We put up at the Aigle, a new hotel, with three 
or four dependances, at the further end of the village. 
Grindelwald is not of the compact order of Swiss 
villages ; indeed, it is almost a town ; at all events, it 
is lighted with gas. It straggles along the main road 
for about three quarters of a mile ; to those coming 
from Lauterbrunnen all uphill. It abounds in hotels. 
After a hard day — not the Wengern Alp, but the 
Hotel du Glacier du Rhone, had made it hard — it 
appeared a gratuitous, almost a cruel, infliction to 
have to pass so many doors that stood open invitingly, 

M 



l62 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



with more than usual persuasiveness, and to trudge 
on, and up, in the hope of reaching the end of the 
place, which, under the circumstances, seemed like 
the Irishman's bit of string, which had had its end 
cut off. But to those who will persevere, even the 
street of Grindelwald will be found to have an end ; 
and one, too, that is worth finding, for it brings you 
to a pleasantly situated, and well-kept inn, where you 
can get a chicken that has not been detained in the 
bath an unconscionable time. What has been dis- 
agreeable in travelling we soon forget, but my recol- 
lections of the Aigle of Grindelwald remain. 

There are, as I just said, many hotels in the place ; 
but as there are also six thousand cows in the valley, 
not travellers, but cheese must be its main reliance. 
It has another industry in ice, which is cut in blocks 
out of the glacier, and sent as far even as Paris. The 
price returned for this is one of the rills of the stream 
of wealth, which railways are pouring into Switzer- 
land, or enabling it to collect for the outside world. 
Two great glaciers come down into the village from 
the two sides of the Mettenberg, which here has 
the Eiger on its right, and the Wetterhorn on its left. 

We had been on the tramp to-day, excluding the 
halt for luncheon, eight hours. With the exception 
of not more than five minutes on the little man's 
horse, my wife did the whole of it on foot, stepping 
out briskly even to the long-sought end of Grindel- 
wald. 



1 63 



CHAPTER XL 

INTERLAKEN AGAIN — CHAR UP THE VALLEY OF THE KANDER 
— WALK OVER THE GEMMI, SLEEPING AT SCHWARENBACH 

— rather — 
To see the wonders of the world abroad 
Than, living dully sluggardized at home, 
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness. — Shakespeare, 

September 14. — Returned early in our voiture to 
Interlaken. From the tramping point of view, the 
right thing to have done in the afternoon would have 
been to have ascended one of the ranges of moun- 
tains, which shut in Interlaken on the right and left. 
But it was fair that the little man should have his 
turn, and his heart was all for the railway, the 
steamer, and the Lake of Thun : and so we went by 
rail, and boat, to Thun and back. The railway, with its 
smart carriages, some of them two stories high, is only a 
mile or two in length, from Interlaken to its port on 
the lake, and is a mere toy. As to the sail on the lake, 
it supplies enough for the eye to feed upon. The 
chief objects on the south side are the Niesen and 

the Stockhorn ; the two mountains which form the 

m 2 



1 64 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



porch of the valley of the Kander, up which lies the 
road to the Gemmi. The boat was very crowded 
with people who were going northward ; the greater 
part of them to Berne, the rail for which commences 
at Thun. About Thun what interests one most at 
this season, as things are seen from the water, are 
the gardens of some of the houses on the edge of the 
lake. The little man, from familiarity with threshing 
machines and agricultural implements, has a strong 
turn for machinery ; hence the attraction for him of 
the railway and steamboat. On board the latter he 
poked about, looking into everything, as if he were 
taking the opportunity to inspect some of his own 
property. 

This was a day, w r hich, to its end, was given up to 
the young gentleman, for in the evening he would 
have us go to the Cursaal to see a display of fireworks. 
They were pretty good. The best thing was the 
illumination of a copious jet of water, which was 
thrown up to the height of about a hundred feet, and 
fell very much broken and dispersed ; the upward rush, 
and the falling drops, reflecting a powerful red light, 
which, screened to the spectators, was burnt in front 
of the fountain. The shrubberies, and trees, all about, 
were at times illuminated, successively, with red> blue, 
and white lights : this was meant to be weird and 
spectraL 

September 15. — It was Sunday. We went tw r ice to 



/ NTRRLA KEN 



the English service, On both occasions the preacher 
was extemporary. He was fluent and imaginative. 
Fluency, and imaginative power (I say this without 
intending a reference to the sermons we heard this 
day), if entirely trusted to at the moment of speak- 
ing, and not kept under the control of previously 
matured thought, will generally run away with a 
preacher, and lead him into making inconsequential, 
and unguarded statements. And if he is, besides, a 
man of some miscellaneous reading, it is not impro- 
bable that much of it will be presented to his audience 
in an undigested form, and not unfrequently rather 
incongruously. In short, all that he says is likely to 
be what Shakespeare calls unproportioned speaking. 

While we were at Interlaken, the moon was ap- 
proaching the full. Both evenings we watched it 
passing over the peaks of the Jungfrau. The snow, 
however, had none of the deadly white, I had expected 
it would have had when seen by moonlight. But the 
moon was beyond the mountain, and so almost all 
the snow on our side was in the shade. 

September 16. — Were to have started at 6 A.M. for 
the Valley of the Kander, on our way to the Gemmi : 
through the dilatoriness, however, of the voiturier we 
had some difficulty in getting off by 6.25. And this 
was not his only lapse ; for, an hour after a forty 
minutes' halt for breakfast, he insisted on halting 
again, for two hours more, at a roadside inn, where 



1 66 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



he, and his horse, were baited ; both probably at our 
expense, for he had brought nothing with him for 
either. As these stoppages are, sometimes, not so 
much needed for the horse, as the result of arrange- 
ments between innkeepers and drivers, which become 
profitable to them through what is extracted from 
you, it would, perhaps, not be a bad plan to make it 
understood beforehand, that your payments will, to 
some extent, depend on the time at which the driver 
may bring you to your destination. 

The road is, at first, along the lake. At the place, 
where it makes an angle, and turns its back upon the 
lake, we breakfasted. The inn looks upon the lake. 
The house itself is not bad ; but what is best about it 
is the feeling it gives rise to that you have escaped 
from the crowding, the bad smells (the Jungfrau was 
free from these), and the pretensions, of a monster 
hotel, where everything is in disagreeable contrast to 
surrounding nature ; the effects of life in the former 
at every turn counteracting and marring the effects of 
the latter. 

A geologist should follow the new channel by which 
the Kander 150 years ago was taken into the lake. He 
will be interested by an inspection of the large delta, 
at the mouth of its new outlet, formed by the vast 
amount of debris the torrent-stream has since brought 
down. Formerly it ran parallel to the lake ; and 
joined the Aar below it, in this part of its course 



THE GEMMI 



t6 7 



keeping a great deal of land in a marshy condition. 
All this has now been reclaimed. 

The scenery of the valley is interesting. From 
Frutigen — it was here that our two hours' halt had been 
called — to Kandersteg, at the foot of the Gemmi, is 
eight miles. The last half of this my wife and I 
walked. 

At Kandersteg we dined ; and having placed the 
little man, and the baggage, on horses, we began the 
ascent at 3.30. The road is in excellent repair. For 
the first hour and a half it is stiff walking through a 
pine forest. The views of the valley of the Kander, 
and of the mountains, are good. The road is then, for 
some distance, taken horizontally along the side of 
the mountain, again through the pine forest. Between 
the clean stems of the trees you look down, on your 
left, into the barren, and truly Alpine, Valley of 
Gasteren. At first it is a rocky gorge ; and then it 
opens into an expanse of level, pale grey sand, and 
small shingle, through which you can make out, from 
above, the glacier stream passing in several small 
channels. The forest is succeeded by an open level 
of poor mountain pasture and rocky ground. On 
the left of this are the peaks of the Altels, and of the 
Rinderhorn, with snow-fields and glacier. You then 
begin to ascend again through a scene that is the 
very grandeur of desolation, There is no vegeta- 
tion; nothing that has life. It appears as if the 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



mighty fragments of dark rock, with which the whole 
is covered, had been rained down from heaven in its 
wrath, and had completely buried out of sight every- 
thing that might once have struggled up here for life, 
and even whatever could have supported life. This 
mountain in ruins, this wrack of rocks, brings you to 
the Schwarenbach inn. It stands on the edge of a 
crateriform depression, in what appears at the time, 
and from the spot, to be the summit of the mountain. 
This depression terminates, on the right, in a grand 
mountain amphitheatre. 

The inn is precisely what it ought to be ; small, 
without any pretension, and without any artificial 
entourage. The people, too, who keep it are most 
ready, and obliging. This is just the sort of place 
one would like to make one's head-quarters, for a 
few days, for excursions from it among the surround- 
ing summits, and for familiarising oneself with the 
spirit of the mountains. 

September 17. — Started a little after 5 A.M., that 
we might see the sun rise from the summit of the 
pass. Overnight I had been roused out of my first 
sleep by a loud, hurried knocking against the thin 
partition, that separated my room from my wife's, 
accompanied by repeated calls to get up at once. I 
lighted a match, and looked at my watch. It was 
just 1 1 o'clock. At 4.30 A.M. the knocking was 



THE GEM MI 



169 



again heard : but this time it came from the opposite 
side of the partition. 

The morning was very cold. The blue boy, and 
the luggage, were on horseback ; my wife, and I, on 
foot. The ascent continued for about two miles 
further. For the first mile the path takes you by 
two or three more crater-like depressions, similar to 
the one on the edge of which the inn stands. You 
then come to a dark mountain lake, fed by the glacier 
of the Wildstrubel, at the southern end of it. It is 
another scene of awful desolation. You are sur- 
prised at observing that the detrital matter, neither of 
the glacier, nor of the environing mountains, has in 
the least degree diminished the size of the lake. It 
seems to-day to be just the same, in size and form, 
that it must have been thousands of years ago. The 
crest of the ridge is reached a little beyond the lake. 
The sight that here bursts upon you is grand indeed. 
The eye passes over the valley of the Rhone — that, 
however, is not yet visible — and rests on the long 
series of snowy peaks, which you know are the finials 
of the barrier ridges that separate Switzerland from 
Italy — the Michabel, the Weisshorn, the Matterhorn, 
the Dent d'Herens, the Dent Blanche. On this 
morning they all stood clear of cloud. While close, 
on our left, just to show us how near we were to losing 
the view, a dense mist was streaming over the moun- 
tains, like a turbid, aerial river, flowing uphill 



170 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



Nothing could be grander ; the rocky peaks around 
us, the snowy peaks before us, and the river of cloud 
rolling by us. We had reached the right point at the 
right moment. 

Having impressed the view on our minds, as 'a 
possession for ever,' we began the descent. The little 
man got off his horse, for the descent can only be 
made on foot ; at all events it always has been, since 
the fatal accident, caused by the stumbling of her 
horse, which here befel the Comtesse d'Arlincourt in 
1 86 1. The luggage, too, was now readjusted, and 
more tightly braced up on the baggage horse. 

Among those who keep to beaten paths the descent 
of the Gemmi is the crowning glory of their excursion. 
This it is that awakens within them most the sensations 
of awe and wonder. And there is much to justify these 
feelings. As you come down the pass, you cannot 
but be surprised at the boldness, ingenuity, and 
perseverance of those who projected, and made it. 
And, perhaps, your surprise will be heightened when, 
on getting to the bottom, and looking up at the sheer 
precipice of some thousands of feet of hard rock, you 
find that you are unable to make out a trace of the 
path you have just been descending. A fissure in the 
perpendicular face of the mountain just made it con- 
ceivable that a series of zig-zags might be carried up 
to the top. And this was what the engineer attempted, 
and succeeded in doing. Originally, many of the 



THE GEM MI 



171 



zig-zags were nothing more than grooves in the face 
of the rock, just sufficient to give foothold to a pe- 
destrian. During the last century, however, they 
have been widened into grooves that admit, with 
perfect safety, the passage of a packhorse with his 
burden. The external wall of a house may be as- 
cended by a staircase applied to it ; and so may the 
perpendicular face of a mountain, two or three 
thousand feet high. And it will come to the same 
thing if the staircase is, in some places, let into the 
face either of the house, or of the mountain wall. The 
motive of the formation of the pass was to save a 
detoiir of some days in getting from the neighbour- 
hood of Thun and Interlaken to the Valais. I sup- 
pose it was worth making as a saving of time and 
labour. But, be that as it may, it impresses itself on 
the mind as a never-to-be-forgotten passage of one's 
Alpine travel. The blue ^boy skipped down it, like a 
chamois, far in advance of everybody ; a guide, of 
course, being with him. My wife insisted on going 
down at the head of the rest of the party, on the plea 
that she was incapable of going behind. I took the 
position assigned me, with a little hug of myself at 
the conceit, the benefit of which, however, at the time 
I kept to myself, that those, who can go as well be- 
hind as before, must be twice as clever as those who 
can go before only. 



172 



CHAPTER XII. 

LEUKABAD— AIGLE 

The life of man is as the life of leaves, 

Which, green to-day, to-morrow sears, and then 

Another race unfolds itself to run 

Again the course of growth and of decay : 

So waxes, and so wanes the race of man. — Homer. 

At a little after 8 A.M. we entered Leukabad, having 
been out three hours from Schwarenbach. I was con- 
tent that both our personnel and our materiel were 
safe, plus the ineffaceable impression on our minds of 
the pass itself. 

Having breakfasted — it is pleasant to have lived 
so much before breakfast— we sallied forth to look at 
the town and the baths. There are several hotels in 
the place, and they were all pretty well tenanted. 
Still the aspect of things was not lively. There was 
none of the stir you observe among the Alpine people 
at such places as Chamouni and Zermatt ; nor was 
there any of the obtrusive bigness, and of the staring 
newness of the hotels almost everywhere, which give 



LEUKABAD 



*73 



you to understand very clearly that, at all events, a 
great deal of business is being done. Here nothing 
was new, and everything was faded. The names 
over the hotels and shops had been there many a day ; 
and the hotels and shops themselves made one think 
of a dead forest covered with lichens and moss, the 
lichens and moss being at least half dead also. 
People moved about so noiselessly that you looked to 
see if their feet were muffled ; saying nothing to each 
other, and having nothing to say. The place was as 
dumb as it was faded. We saw an old man washing 
old bottles, of a by-gone form, at an old fountain, into 
and out of which the water was feebly dribbling, as if 
it had nearly done coming and had nowhere to go. He 
was the only person we saw doing anything, and he 
did it as if he thought there was no use in doing it. 
Those who were taking the baths were oppressed with 
a consciousness that they were getting no good from 
them ; and that they were doing it only because 
something must be attempted. Their despondency 
had an air of obstinacy that would not be comforted, 
deep and silent ; like that of people who have just 
found out that the foundations on which they have 
long been building great expectations, are all a 
delusion, — either a figment of their own, or a tradition 
from times when such things were not understood — 
and who have not yet come to think that the world 
may still have something else for them to turn to. At 



174 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



12 o'clock the voiturier we had engaged to take us to 
Sierre, came up to the door of the hotel, with his 
worm-eaten vehicle and his worn-out horses. But he 
came in so mute and spectral a fashion — anywhere 
else he would have announced himself with a little 
final flourish and crack of his whip — that we were not 
for some time aware of his arrival. It was a relief 
when he lighted his cigar, for that was the first indica- 
tion of life we had seen in the place. 

On the road to Sierre we passed through dust 
enough to bury Leukabad — a ceremony which it 
would be as well should not be deferred any longer. 
And, if Sierre had been put on the top of it, there 
would still have been some to spare. 

This dusty drive enhanced the 'pleasantness of 
recalling our late mountain walks. We had now com- 
pleted the circuit of the great ice-field of the Bernese 
Oberland, which is more than 100 square miles in 
extent, and is supposed to be the largest in Europe. 
Its boundaries, all of which we had traced, are the 
Valais, the Grimsel, the Valley of the Aar, and the 
Gemmi. We had had a near or more distant view of 
all its chief snowy peaks, but had nowhere crossed 
any part of the snow-field itself. That, perhaps, may 
be the work of another day, when the blue boy will 
be old enough, and the rest of the party not yet too 
old, for such work ; for those who are not up to 
Peaks, either of the first or second class, may still 



ON THE WAY TO SIERRE 175 



graduate as Pass-men by crossing the ice-fields between 
the Peaks. 

Another possible arrangement for the work of 
the two last days would have been to have ascended 
the Niesen, at the foot of which we had passed yester- 
day morning. This would have obliged us to have 
slept at Kandersteg instead of, as we did, at the top 
of the Gemmi. The ascent of the Niesen, even for 
such a party as was ours, would have been easy 
enough ; and the views from it are said to be very 
good. In that case, however, we should have had to 
do the Gemmi at one stretch. Our loss would have 
been sleeping at Kandersteg, and not at the Schwaren- 
bach, and the abandonment of our chance of a good 
sunrise from the summit of the Pass ; though that was 
a chance which, as it happened, was worth nothing to 
us ; for, in such perfectly fine, and singularly clear 
weather as we had, the sun rises and sets without 
those glories of colour which require haze and clouds 
for their reflection. 

As to weather, which is the first, the second, and 
the third requisite in such an expedition, we had 
scarcely seen a cloud during our three weeks' tramp. 
Up to the day before I got on my legs at Visp it had 
been an unusually wet and cold season. During the 
night I was at the Simplon Hospice it rained a little. 
That was the only shower that fell, where I was, dur- 
ing the whole time we were out. The quarter of an 



i 7 6 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



hour's snow on the Riffel was merely the passage of a 
stray bit of mountain scud. The sun, throughout, had 
shone so brightly that some of its brightness had been 
reflected from the world outside upon the world with- 
in. Almost every party of travellers in Switzerland, 
this year, we met with had a very different account to 
give of the weather they had encountered. When 
good luck is pleased to come, it must fall to some one ; 
and this year it fell to us. 

So ended the second act of our little family ex- 
cursion. The scene of the first had been the Valleys 
of Zermatt and Saas, with my intercalated tramp over 
the Monte Moro, through the Val Anzasca, and over 
the Simplon. I can, with a safe conscience, recom- 
mend the precise route we took to any family party, 
constituted at all as ours was. The time occupied, 
from first to last, was exactly three weeks ; and three 
weeks they were, which we look back upon as well 
spent. It had no difficulties, and enough of interest 
and variety. As to the cost, I can give no details or 
items, for I keep no accounts, and never have. But, 
speaking in the gross, I believe it cost somewhat less 
than thirty shillings a head a day. Doubtless, it may 
be done for less. The best rule in such matters, of 
course, is, if you can afford it, to have what you want, 
and what will make a pleasure pleasant. As to 
equipment, what you need actually carry along with 
you is so little, that the statement of it would appear 



CAMPING OUT 



177 



to people at home ridiculous. But, then, you can 
send on by the Post from place to place not only your 
heavy luggage, but such articles as your hat, if you are 
youthful, or old-fashioned enough to take a hat with 
you, and your spare pair of walking boots, and every 
thing else you may wish to have occasionally. 

And here I have a suggestion to throw out, which 
occurred to me while I was on the tramp. What put 
it into my head was the incongruity of hotel life with 
excursions amid such scenes. In the Rocky Moun- 
tains the great enjoyment of the year is camping out 
in the fine season. In Syria and in India people 
travel with their tents. Why should we not camp out, 
and travel with our tents, in July and August in 
Switzerland ; and so break loose altogether from the 
hotels ? One mule, or horse, would carry the tent and 
all the tent furniture. If sometimes, but such a neces- 
sity would seldom arise, you had to pitch your tent 
on damp grass land, no inconvenience, I believe, would 
ensue. I have slept on a damp meadow under a 
tent on a bare plank, and was none the worse for it. 
And with the addition of a little hay, or straw, upon 
the plank, and upon that a waterproof sheet, you 
would have a luxurious bed for one who had walked 
five-and-twenty miles, and had not been under a roof 
during the day. The tent-mule might carry three 
light planks, each six feet long ; for I will suppose 
that the party consists of two travellers, and a guide 

N 



178 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



who also acts as muleteer. A saucepan, kettle, 
gridiron, and a few stores, to be renewed as required, 
would be necessary. Were the weather to prove un- 
accommodating there would always be the hotels at 
hand to take refuge in. A month of such campaign- 
ing would be very independent ; and, I believe, very 
healthful and enjoyable. 

At Sierre we took the rail for Aigle. There were 
a great many tedious delays on the way: one at 
almost every station. But to complain would be 
unreasonable, for, of course, the natives like to get as 
much as they can for the fares they have paid ; and 
the lower the fare the greater the gain, if they get 
much of the rail for it. It was near 6 o'clock when 
we reached Aigle, where we intended to set up our 
head-quarters for some days, while looking out for a 
winter residence for my wife and the little man. 

The night was still, and clear. In that unpolluted 
atmosphere, and among the mountains, the bright, 
soft, gleaming of the moon — it was now a little beyond 
the full— as it brings out the silvered peaks, and seems 
to darken the ravines, casts, as old Homer * noted 

* As when in heaven the stars 
Are shining round about the lustrous moon, 
Exceeding bright ; and all the air is still ; 
And every jutting peak, and beacon point 
Stands clear, e'en to the wooded slopes below ' } 
And the whole field of ether, opened out 
Unfathomable, shows each particular star ; 



THE WITCHERY OF THE MOON 179 



long ago, a pleasing spell over you; and you be- 
come indisposed to mar the silence of nature with 
a word. The spell, however, on this occasion was 
somewhat broken by the disturbing effect of con- 
tinuous lightning, in the direction of the head of the 
valley, though the horizon was undimmed, throughout 
its whole circumference, by so much as a trace of 
haziness. 

Of this witching power of the moon all people 
appear to be conscious. But how does it come to act 
upon us in this way ? Many, doubtless, have tried to 
analyze, and get to the bottom of the feeling. I 
would suggest that the effect is produced by an 
unconscious comparison of the moon with the sun ; 
and, then, by an unconscious inference drawn from 

And at the sight the shepherd to his heart 
Is fill'd with gladness. — Iliad viii. 551. 

I have essayed a rendering of this famous simile, not because I hope 
to succeed where so many are supposed to have failed, but because, as 
may be believed of a country parsonage, I have not a single translation 
of it at hand. It may be objected to the one I am driven to offer that 
the unfathomableness of the field of ether is a modern idea ; and that 
Homer meant immensity in the direction, not of the profundity of the 
celestial space, but in the direction of its expansion. Our idea, how- 
ever, embraces the whole of Homer's, and goes beyond it. 

The double mention of the stars is hardly tautological ; for the first 
mention of them is an indispensable stroke in the sketch, which was 
intended to convey to our minds the idea of a fine bright night ; while 
the shining of so many particular stars in the immeasurable field of 
heaven is the point of the simile. As many as are the stars visible in 
such a sky, so many were the camp fires of the Trojan bivouac on the 
broad plain. 

N 2 



i8o A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



the comparison. The sun is the lord of our waking 
hours, and, as respects the moon, is our standard of 
comparison. Whatever we think of we must think of 
in reference to something else, that something else 
being the leading and most familiar object of the 
class the thing, at the moment thought about, be- 
longs to, except it be the leading object itself, when 
the reverse reference is made. When, then, we look 
at the moon, there is a reference in the mind to the 
ideas and feelings, the results of our experience, we 
have about the sun. We may not be aware of this, 
but it is so, and cannot be otherwise. The sun is 
what gives us our conception of a large luminous body, 
apparently moving, majestically, round our earth. 
Having, then, made this comparison unconsciously — if 
It were done consciously there would be no spell, or 
witchery — we note the differences. The light is not 
the same. It does not penetrate to the recesses of 
objects. It does not give clear definition. It does 
not enable us to make out surfaces at a distance. It is 
not dazzling. It does not enable the beholder to dis- 
tinguish colours. There is something spectral about it. 
But, above all, it is light unaccompanied by warmth. 
The substratum of our thought, as we look at the 
moon, is the sun : yet everything is different. The 
inference, again unconsciously arrived at, is that of 
the wondrous variety, combined with unspeakable 
magnitude, and other deeply affecting particulars, in 



THE WITCHERY OF THE MOON 181 



these the greatest works, as they strike us at the 
moment, of the dimly-apprehended mystery of the 
universe. These half-formed thoughts, and their cor- 
responding emotions, are brought home, not so much 
by the sun, because we are too familiar with it, and the 
objects we compare it with unconsciously are of inferior 
grandeur, as they are by the moon, that is, by the con- 
templation of it on a bright clear night. The moon 
stands far above all natural objects, indeed, it stands 
almost alone, in possessing the means for producing, in 
the way I have supposed, on all minds the effect we 
are endeavouring to understand. And the effect is 
deepened by the character of the hour. It is night 
All is still. There is nothing to distract attention ; 
nothing to dissipate the effect. 

It will help us here, if we see that it is, in part, the 
same reason, which impels the dog to bay the moon. 
With him, as with ourselves, the standard of com- 
parison is the sun. The light of the full moon invites 
him to look out from his kennel. He sees,, as he 
thinks, the sun in heaven. The sun has ever been to 
him the source of warmth as well as of light. He has 
come to connect the idea of light emanating from a 
great luminary in heaven with that of warmth. But 
this sun, he is looking at now, does not give him any 
warmth. It even appears to strike him with a chill. 
The light, too, which it emits has differences, which 
are very perceptible, but unwonted, and unintelligible. 



182 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



It does not enable him to make out familiar objects in 
the way in which light ought. His nerves are affected 
by these differences and disappointments. His agita- 
tion increases. In the still night there is nothing to 
divert his thoughts. It becomes insupportable. He 
gives unconscious expression to his agitation. He 
bays the moon. It is an expression of deep distress. 

These feelings of the dog may also in some re- 
spects be compared to the feelings that used to come 
ovQf all mankind, and still come over the savage, and 
other untutored people, at the contemplation of an 
eclipse. 

September 18. — The lightning of last night was 
not an empty threat, for this morning dense masses of 
cloud were rolling down the valley, and there was 
much rain. We had been talking of going up the 
Dent du Midi; but, as it was, we could not get out 
till late in the afternoon, and then it still continued 
to be showery. We managed, however, to see one of 
the factories for parquetry floors, of which there are 
several here. Their work is beautifully executed, and 
very cheap. It is sent all over the world. We saw 
some orders that had just been executed for Egypt, 
and for the United States. 

The contrast between Aigle and Leukabad is com- 
plete. Here everything is new, and neat, and bright 
Opposite to us, across the road — we were quite new 
ourselves — was a house, in its trim grounds, as new, and 



AIGLE 



i»3 



neat, and bright as freshly wrought stone, and fresh 
paint could make it. There was not a weather-stain 
upon it. At the bottom of our garden were a party of 
jabbering Italian masons running up what was to be 
a large pension. But the most conspicuous of the new 
things in Aigle was a grand hotel, a little way off, nearer 
the mountains : so new that the grounds were not yet 
laid out. And so it was with almost everything in 
this flourishing little place, which has secured its full 
share in the rapidly-growing prosperity of the country. 
Its attractions are that it has a dry soil ; a warm, 
sunny situation ; and cheerful views. The baths of 
Leukabad cannot keep it alive. The sunshine of Aigle 
gives it life. If the decay of Leukabad, and the pro- 
sperity of Aigle at all show that people now endeavour 
to retain health by natural means, whereas the plan 
formerly was to let it go, and then endeavour to re- 
cover it by very doubtful means, we may deem the 
world has, in this particular, grown somewhat wiser 
than it was of yore ; and so far, to go back once 
more to our old friend, Homer, we may boast that 
we are better than our fathers. 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE DRAMA OF THE MOUNTAINS 
Non canimus surdis. — Virgil. 

I WILL here give two or three pages to the blue boy. 
He is not at all aware that I am about to put him into 
print. The reader, I trust, will think that the betrayal 
of confidence involved in my doing so is not altogether 
unjustifiable. I mentioned that on the day we crossed 
the Grimsel, from the Rhone Glacier to Meiringen, he 
was unusually silent. He afterwards told me that he 
had then been engaged in composing a drama, which 
was to be entitled ' The Drama of the Mountains,' in 
which the most conspicuous mountains he had seen — 
he had in 1870 made the acquaintance of M. Blanc — 
were to be the Dramatis Persons. Nothing more was 
said on the subject then, or afterwards. We have 
infantine productions of Dr. Johnson, Pope, the late 
Professor Conington, and of others. I now offer the 
following drama, as an addition to this kind of litera- 
ture. I can vouch for its entire authenticity and 



THE BLUE BOY'S DRAMA 



genuineness. It shall be printed from the blue boy's 
own MS. The whole composition was arranged in 
his mind, some days before it was put upon paper, 
without a hint or suggestion from anybody, and sub- 
sequently not a word was corrected, nor even a point 
in the stopping altered. It could not have been more 
entirely his own had he been the only soul in Switzer- 
land at the time it was composed. Hewas alone, too, 
at the time it was put upon paper. On the first day 
we were at Aigle — I have just mentioned that it was 
a wet day — I found him writing it currente calamo ; 
and on hearing what he was about, I immediately left 
the room. 

I must premise that last summer I had read to him 
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (he was then translating 
Caesar's Commentaries), and the Midsummer Night's 
Dream. On each of which occasions he immediately 
afterwards produced a drama of his own ; one in the 
high classical style founded on Roman history, the 
other in the style of Bottom's interlude. His having 
had those two plays read to him is the extent of his 
acquaintance with dramatic literature. 

Those who may happen to have no personal ac- 
quaintance with his dramatis persona, will allow a 
word or two on the appropriateness of the parts 
imagined for them. Blanc, of course, is Emperor in 
his own, the old, right : from his shoulders and up- 
wards he is higher than any of his people. So with 



1 86 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



Rosa : she has the same fitness for being Empress. 
Weishorn and Jungfrau are, beyond controversy, 
worthy of being, as the order of nature has made 
them, Prince and Princess Imperial. Cervin (the 
blue boy thinks in French, and so he calls Matterhorn 
by his French name), by reason of his signal and con- 
spicuous uprightness, is the best of Prime Ministers. 
Schreckhorn's name and character fit him for the 
Ministry of Police, and prepare us for his horrible 
treason. Simplon has conferred on him the place of 
the Emperor's Messenger, on account of his services 
to the world in supporting the most serviceable of the 
great passes into Italy. We are not surprised at find- 
ing Silberhorn acting as Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
Monch appropriately counsels peace. Finsteraarhorn, 
it will be observed, is taunted with hardly daring to 
show his face : a sarcastic allusion to the difficulty 
there is of getting a view of this mountain. 

That the Empire of the Mountains was transferred 
to the Potentate of the Himalaya, was intended not 
only as an illustration of the bad policy of calling in 
to our assistance one stronger than ourselves — the 
mistake the horse made when he entered into a 
league with man to drive the stag from the contested 
pasture — but, also, as an application, and this was the 
main idea, of the broad simple principle of detur 
digniori. 



THE BLUE BOY'S DRAMA 



187 



THE DRAMA OF THE MOUNTAINS. 
1 

Blanc, emperor of the Alps. 
Rosa, his wife. 
Cervin, his prime-minister. 
Jungfrau, his daughter. 
Weishorn, his son. 

Finsteraarhorn, JungfraiC s husband. 
Monch, the priest. 
Schreckhorn, the police-agent. 
Simplon, messenger of the Alps. 
Silberhorn, treasurer. 



Chimoulari, kiiig of the Himalaya. 
Dwalagiri, his prime-minister. 
Everest, his son. 



1 88 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



|§rolagire. 

The empire of the Alps consists of a large number of European 
mountains, who think themselves the highest in the world ; but it is not 
so, for the kingdom of the Himalaya is still higher and wiser. In the 
empire of the Alps, there had been internal disturbances between Blanc, 
the emperor, and Schreckhorn, the police-agent, in which Schreckhorn 
had mostly had the advantage and had shut the others up in a prison. 
But they escaped and applied to Chimoulari, king of the Himalaya, to 
help them, which he accordingly did, and defeated Schreckhorn. 
Chimoulari then received the empire of the Alps, and was then emperor 
of all the mountains in the world. • 



THE BLUE BOY'S DRAMA 189 



ACT L 

Scene I. 
Blanc's Palace. 
{Enter Blanc, Cervin, Weishorn, Jungfrau, Rosa, Fin- 

STERAARHORN, MONCH.) 
BLANC. 

Are we all met ? 

WEISHORN. 

Yes, we are ; we must not speak too loud, for Schreckhora 
is outside the door. 

CERVIN. 

Schreckhorn outside the door ! impossible ! 

FINSTERAARHORN. 

Fear nothing. 

CERVIN. 

Finster, really, this is too bad : you wish to have us all 
in the lockup ; yes, you who hardly dare to show your 
face ! 

ROSA. 

Blanc, my husband, please send Finster out. 

JUNGFRAU. 

Blanc, don't, don't. — Rosa, what do you mean ; do you 
wish to deliver Finster into the hands of Schreckhorn ? 

MONCH. 

Peace ! peace ! {Exeunt omnes. ) 

{Enter Schreckhorn and Silberhorn.) 



190 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

SCHRECKHORN. 

Silberhorn, pay me your debts. 

SILBERHORN. 

Please, my lord. 

SCHRECKHORN. 

Please is nothing to me ; pay ! 

SILBERHORN. 

Blanc, come and help me. (Enter Blanc.) 

SCHRECKHORN. 

I condemn you both to lose fifty feet of your height. 

BLANC. 

Ah ! (Exeunt om?ies). 

Scene II. 
The Same. 
(Enter Blanc and Simplon.) 

BLANC. 

Would it not be better if you called in Chimoulari ? 

SIMPLON, 

Yes, I will immediately. (Exeunt duo.) 

Scene III 
27ie Same. 

(Enter Blanc, Chimoulari, Dwalagiri, and Everest.) 

CHIMOULARI, 

Blanc, what do you want ? 

BLANC. 

To make war against Schreckhorn. 



THE BLUE BOY'S DRAMA 191 

DWALAGIRI. 

That is very easy. 

EVEREST, 

I will be general. (Exeunt.) 

Scene IV. 
The Same. 
{Enter Schreckhorn and Everest.) 

EVEREST. 

Down with Thee. 

SCHRECKHORN. 

I will bring thee to nothing ! 

(Everest knocks down Schreckhorn, kills him, and 
goes out.) 

Scene V. 
The Same. 

(Enter Blanc, Chimoulari, and Everest.) 

EVEREST. 

I have killed Schreckhorn. 

CHIMOULARI. 

Now, Blanc, give me the Empire of the Alps. 

BLANC. 

Must I yield it ? yes, I suppose. 

(Everest and Blanc exeunt) 

CHIMOULARI. 

Now am I monarch of all around me ! let me rejoice, 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



I do not give this little drama as a wonderful 
work for a child of between nine and ten, but to show 
what I think any child of average powers might do, 
spontaneously and with pleasure, if only parents and 
teachers could be brought to understand that the area 
of their teaching should be expanded to its natural 
limits, that i$ to the history of man, and to a general 
acquaintance with our earth. The proper starting 
point for the former is the history, in its widest sense, 
of the towns and localities with which the child is 
familiar ; and for the latter the natural objects, moun- 
tains, rivers, valleys, plains, vegetation, animal life, 
meteorology, &c, of the same localities. The teacher 
should then pass on, in both these departments, from 
what has been understood, because it has been seen, to 
what will be understood, though not seen, because it 
differs in certain particulars, that can be explained, 
from what is already understood. So much for the 
area : and an equally great change must be brought 
about in the manner of teaching. We must adopt the 
natural method as well as the natural area ; that is to 
say, we must teach orally and conversationally. In 
this way only can what is taught to a child be made 
intelligible. And if it be not made intelligible it can- 
not possibly interest. One step more : all about man 
and nature, that has thus been taught orally and con- 
versationally, should always be subsequently repeated 
in the child's own words. This ; among many other 



RANGE AND METHODS OF TEACHING 193 



great advantages, cultivates as nothing else can, be- 
cause, again, in the natural way, both the power of 
attention and the power of continuous extemporary 
expression. Teaching by the book and by heart — 
well so phrased, for the understanding has nothing 
to do with it, and it takes all heart out of a child — has, 
among others, this conspicuous evil, that at the cost 
to the child of compulsory ignorance, and gratuitously- 
engendered aversion to mental effort, it saves nothing, 
except the necessity, in the teacher, of knowing any- 
thing about what he professes to teach. 



0 



194 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



CHAPTER XIV, 

ON SWISS HOTELS 

In this the antique, and well-noted face 

Of plain old form is much disfigured. — Shakespeare, 

For the word or two I have to say about the Swiss 
monster hotels, I can make the one mentioned at 
the close of the twelfth chapter my point de depart 
with safety ; for I never entered it, and only know 
from what I saw outside, that it is fire-new, and as 
monstrous as new. As you look at one of these 
modern caravansaries, you are amused at thinking 
how precisely everything in it is the facsimile of all 
that you have seen in a score of others. The Swiss 
believe, and act, too, on the belief, that they have 
reduced hotel-keeping to an exact science ; among 
them, therefore, in this matter, there cannot be any 
longer two opinions about the form of, or the way 
of doing, any one thing whatsoever. Everywhere 
the building itself appears arranged, externally and 
internally, on the same plan. Of an hotel, as of a five- 
pound note, there can be but one idea. In either case 



ON SWISS HOTELS 



any deviation from the archetypal paradigm would 
disqualify the thing produced from being regarded as 
that which it professes to be. 

As to life within the hotel, everywhere you have 
the same breakfast : coffee, two kinds of bread (the 
more solid kind almost always sticky and sour, the 
flour having been made from imperfectly rij^ned and 
imperfectly harvested grain), butter that is somewhat 
insipid, and honey that will inevitably soil your 
fingers, and perhaps trouble your interior. Exact 
science has demonstrated, beyond controversy, that 
precisely this breakfast, for every day in the three 
hundred and sixty-five, hits with mathematical rigour 
the point at which the wants and rights of the traveller 
— though, indeed, he has no business himself to think 
about his having any rights or wants at all — meet the 
scientifically regarded economies of the innkeeper. 
This unvarying breakfast is everywhere served to you 
on the same unvarying china — always white, solid, 
and heavy. Exact science informs us that if china 
of this kind be used there is a smaller amount of 
breakage, and that replacements are easy : and from 
exact science there is no appeal. That you who have 
to use it would prefer a little variety now and then has 
nothing at all to do with the matter. 

And then as to your dinner : it also is always the 
same. As the dinner-bell reminds you of this, you 
find that you are agitated by an involuntary shudder. 

O 2 



196 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



Always, and everywhere, the same viands cooked in 
the same fashion ; and served, too, again on the same 
white, solid, heavy china. There is the inevitable filet 
de bceuf : more inevitable than the conscience of an evil 
deed, for that does not rise up before you throughout 
your whole life every day. One feels that one could 
almost give a year's income never to see or hear 
mention made of this filet de bceuf any more. Then 
come mutton and chicken, the latter always with 
salad. Sometimes, however, one of the two latter is 
replaced with veal. But the beef, the mutton, the 
veal, and the chicken, before they were roasted or ra- 
gouted, had been passed through the already-mentioned 
bath, in order to make the potage with which you com- 
menced your repast. The mind, encouraged by the wil- 
fulness of the palate, refuses to form a conception of a 
sirloin of beef, or of a leg of mutton, that had been 
boiled before it was roasted ; or of a beef-steak, or of a 
mutton-chop, that had passed through the digester on 
its way to the gridiron ; or of a veal-cutlet that has had 
its natural insipidity aggravated by this exhaustive 
treatment. The regale concludes with, every day, 
the same dried figs and the same raisins ; or if it be 
late enough in the season, with the same plums and 
the same pears, so called, eked out by the same little 
cakes and the same little biscuits. Swiss hotel science 
repudiates entirely the ideas of roasted joints, and 
almost entirely of puddings. As to the wine, it has 



ON SWISS HOTELS 



197 



not, as might be expected, any exceptional merit ; 
and as to the varieties indicated on the carte, they 
do not always correspond with the varieties of Nature : 
for science has demonstrated that a variety of labels 
constitute a variety of kinds. 

You are pursued by this scientific sameness to 
your bed-room ; and are soon haunted in your dreams 
with the idea that you are carrying about with you 
everywhere your bed and your bed-room furniture. 
As to the looking-glass, it is never on a dressing- 
table, but always nailed to the wall ; for the science 
of Swiss hotel-keeping has discovered that the frame 
for a glass of this kind is cheaper than what would be 
required for one placed on a table ; and that, besides, 
there is a far less chance of the glass itself being 
broken when it has become a fixture on the wall. 
This, however, obliges you to encumber yourself with a 
glass of your own ; for a man cannot shave by a glass 
that has not its back to the light. Not even in the lock 
of your bed-room door is there a shadow of variation. 
It is always of iron, for iron is cheaper than brass ; and 
always of the same form and size : they must all have 
been made at the same factory. And this unfailing 
black iron lock, always of the same size, is always 
attached to the surface of the door instead of being 
let into it Your candlestick, too, is always the same 
—you fall back again on the theory of a single factory 
— a mere pedestal of brass with a glass cup at the 



198 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



top — I hav.e, however, occasionally seen them without 
this glass cup — to receive the overflowings of the 
compo, which is often euphoniously described in the 
bill as bougie. But possibly where the glass is now 
wanting, it may, as exact science does not recognise 
disturbing causes, have originally existed. The candle 
again, in the unvarying candlestick, is always every- 
where the same, with a wick that is but little more 
than a thread. The rationale of this tenuity of the wick 
is that the compo may not be consumed too rapidly for 
science. But then the least gust of air, or a careless 
quick movement of the candle, extinguishes it. You 
then have to relight it with a sulphurous lucifer, 
always everywhere sulphurous. 

As to the traveller himself, he soon comes to find 
that he is not regarded as a thinking, feeling, and act- 
ing, or in any way independent entity. He is not 
supposed to have any likes or dislikes ; any wants or 
ways of his own : he is merely one of the constituent 
molecules of an aggregated mass of inert, insentient 
matter, which must be manipulated in a certain fixed 
manner, which the discoveries of hotel science have 
shown to be necessary in order to produce a certain 
determinate result in the form of a certain amount of 
profit. Or he may compare himself to one of the 
milch-cows belonging to the hotel, which must have 
that amount of attention bestowed upon it, that 
amount of daily provender, and of that kind, and at 



ON SWISS HOTELS 



199 



night that berth and bedding, which at the least cost 
will produce the greatest amount of milk. Finding 
yourself treated in this way, merely as a unit in a 
large herd, you become aware that you are losing your 
sense of personal identity. How can you go on believing 
that you are what Nature made you, or that you have 
any special nature at all of your own, when, from being 
constantly herded with a hundred other people, all 
fed during the day, and provided for during the night, 
in precisely the same fashion, everything is conspir- 
ing to impress upon you the self-obliterating con- 
viction that you are exactly what all the rest are : 
nothing more, nothing less, and nothing different ? 

Of your associate molecules, your fellow milch- 
cows, in these monster hotels, the majority speak 
your own language. Of these perhaps you will regard 
with most sympathy and favour the mountain-climbers, 
although you may yourself have ceased, as will pro- 
bably be the case, if you are on the shady side of 
fifty, to look upon athletics, pure and simple, as the 
object of life. Still these vigorous specimens of 
youthful British humanity have set themselves some- 
thing to do, and are doing it ; and it is something 
that requires, at all events, enterprise and endurance. 
Not many of them, however, are to be found in the 
most aggravated form of the monstei hotel, for that 
belongs to the towns rather than to the mountains, 
Another class is composed of those who do not climb, 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



but are merely enthusiasts on the subject of mountain 
scenery. Of these the most gushing are of the fairer 
sex. With them, too, you can go as far as they go ; 
though not quite to the extent of applying the epithet 
of ( lovely ' to everything indiscriminately, even to 
rugged peaks, and rivers of ice ; nor of being con- 
sumed by their uncontrollable desire to know, for a 
few moments, the name of every peak and point that 
happens to be in sight, and to arrive at this evanes- 
cent knowledge by the process of questioning the 
bystanders. You meet also multitudes of lawyers, 
clergymen, schoolmasters, and literary men. These, 
speaking generally, are the elite of the corresponding 
classes you have at home. Another large item is 
made up of men engaged in trade and business, from 
London and the manufacturing districts. It is a very 
good thing for them that they are able to leave their 
counters, and counting-houses, and factories ; and to 
exchange, for a time, the murky atmosphere, and the 
moil and toil of the routine of their ordinary lives for 
the mountains. This makes you glad to see them 
also. 

Everybody knows that our Transatlantic cousins 
will be met with everywhere in shoals, and nowhere 
are these shoals greater than in Switzerland. Some 
of those you fall in with will be New York shoddy- 
lords, some will be Pennsylvanians who have struck oil, 
some wall be successful speculators in real estate in 



ON SWISS HOTELS 



201 



the neighbourhood of rising western cities. But if 
you have known the American in his own country, 
and in his own home, and are not dissatisfied with a 
man, merely because he cannot pronounce the Shib- 
boleths of Eton and Oxford, you will be glad to make 
the acquaintance of a large proportion of the Ame- 
ricans you encounter. They are clear-headed and 
hard-headed ; men who hold their own ground, and 
are, at the same time, sociable and friendly. 

The Germans come next in number to those who 
speak our own tongue, they are quiet, honest, and 
earnest ; and have evidently come to Switzerland for 
the purpose— there is no doubt about that — of con^ 
structing in their minds a correct idea of the nucleus, 
and central watershed, of Europe. But, as few of 
us speak German, there is little intercourse between 
them and English travellers. 

Among the inmates of all these large hotels, 
because it is in them that such wanderers find most 
nearly what suits them, there remains a conspicuous 
residuum, that of those who have nothing in the world 
to do, and who, as thoroughly as if they were peak- 
and-pass-men, do it. They belong to all countries : 
Russia, France, England, and America supply each 
its respective quota. They are, for the most part, 
carefully, sometimes rather loudly got up : they have 
not much else to attend to. And from this, perhaps 
also from a little assumption in their manner, they 



202 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



contrive somewhat to obtrude themselves on the 
general notice of the world in the hotel. They 
belong to the class of failures, the coups manques, of 
civilised humanity. They are the waifs and strays of 
modern society, with money enough, and often plenty 
of it, to live out of their own country. Sometimes 
with not enough left to live at home as they once 
did. They have no sense of home, nor love of 
country ; but a sufficient sense of the duty men owe 
to themselves. You sometimes hear them intimating, 
as a reason for their voluntary expatriation, that 
they do not quite like their own country, and coun- 
trymen — perhaps no great proof of the demerit of 
either, or of their own judgment. The largest portion 
of the self-depreciators of this kind belong to the 
English quota of the class. 

The disciples of so exalted and serene a philo- 
sophy, having got beyond home, and country, and 
all inconveniently large ideas of duty, can have no 
prejudices. Pet ideas, however, like the rest of the 
world, they have ; and the one they most pet is 
expressed in our time-honoured, home-manufactured 
phrase, though amongst ourselves its use is prompted 
by the anxieties and fears of deep love, that * the 
sun of England has set' This is quite intelligible 
in a certain class of Frenchmen and Russians. The 
wish, with them, was father to the thought. They, 
as might have been expected, have become dazzled 



ON SWISS HOTELS 



203 



at the excess of light which radiates from our sun, 
and can now only look at it through the green lens. 
This old familiar phrase, coming from such oracular 
lips (but the announcement as it comes from them is 
history, not prophecy, for it is the announcement 
of a fait accompli), is accepted, with thorough satis- 
faction, by those of our countrymen who are disposed 
to regard its promulgators with submissive admira- 
tion, and are vainly endeavouring to form themselves 
on their model. They are only too thankful for 
any crumbs which fall from such tables. But be this 
as it may, the business of these wanderers is to go 
up and down, and to and fro, upon the earth. In 
this respect their occupation resembles the descrip- 
tion the reprobate sprite gave of his. And he, too, 
had lost the sense, if we may so put it, of home, 
and country, and duty ; and must also have had in 
his eyes some tint of green. But they go only where 
locomotion and life are easy ; and where they may 
expect to find the society of congenial sprites, who 
will not ruffle them, will not be blind to their merits, 
and will take them, occasionally, at the price they set 
upon themselves. 

It may, then, be placed on the credit side of the 
account of these scientifically managed hotels, though, 
at the time, one, being averse to entering them, and 
not averse to leaving them, is not disposed to credit 
them with much good, that they supply some mate- 



204 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



rials for 1 the proper study of mankind; It was not, 
however, for the purpose of obtaining facilities for the 
prosecution of this study that you came to Switzerland : 
perhaps, rather it was that you might lose sight of it 
for a time. 



205 



CHAPTER XV. 

BERNE — SWISS FOUNTAINS — ZURICH — MUSEUM OF RELICS 

FROM ANCIENT LAKE-VILLAGES BAUR EN VILLE — RECOLTE 

DES VOYAGEURS — C'EST UN PAUVRE PAYS 

Beyond compare, of all things best 
Is water. — Pindar. 

September 19. — We spent the day at Vevey. 
Vineyards were everywhere along the sides of the 
railway. It is pleasing to note the care with which 
the vine, that peerless gift of Nature's bounty to man, 
is cultivated ; how the land is terraced and fenced, 
and how scrupulously clean it is kept. This indicates 
the value of the land that is adapted to its growth-, 
and is in keeping with the character of the gift. Had 
a swim in the lake. My first plunge into it was thirty- 
one years ago, on returning to Geneva from a walking 
expedition to Chamouni. 

On the following day (dates are no longer needed, 
for our excursion was now ended, and I was returning 
home, on my own hook) I started for Zurich by way 
of Berne. The country, as seen from the rails, looks 



t 



206 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

as if it were fertile, and carefully cultivated. The 
three points in which, to the eye of a passer-by, their 
agriculture appears to differ most from ours are, first, 
the greater cleanness of the land. I know no farmers 
— of course there are many exceptions, and notably 
where there is steam-ploughing — who cultivate so 
many weeds as the famous British farmer. Secondly, 
their not giving to their land so much manure as we 
do. One, however, may be mistaken on this point. And, 
thirdly, in the absence of live stock from the fields. I 
understood that the price of land is very high : the 
figures given to me were higher than the price of 
equally good agricultural land would come to here at 
home. 

Since I was last at Berne, it appeared to me that 
a great deal had been done in the way of extension 
and improvement. The place has the look of having 
thriven much, and of still continuing to thrive. A 
few years ago a neighbouring stream was diverted, 
and made to flow through the heart of the city. It 
supplies, in its new course, several copious public 
fountains. These are sculptured and decorated, as if 
the people loved the water, and wished to heighten 
their pleasure at seeing, and welcoming, and using it. 
One of the most pleasing sights in a Swiss town — it 
is the same down to the smallest village — -is this 
abundance of good water with which it is supplied. 
It is ever in sight, for every use of man and beast. In 



SWISS WATER-SUPPLY 



207 



our English cities there was no want — the omission is 
still far from having been set right — that was so con- 
spicuously neglected. And this, though an abundant 
supply of good water is not only a first necessity of 
life, but equally so of civilisation. The reasons of 
our negligence, in a matter of so much importance, 
are not far to seek. As the Swiss manage their 
own affairs, their first care is to provide themselves 
with what all need ; and, evidently, the first thing of 
this kind to be attended to is the water-supply. Their 
system, too, of political, and, as respects the land, to 
some extent, of possessive equality, has engendered a 
sentiment of philanthropy ; not of the charitable, or 
condescending, kind, but a general desire in all to 
attend to the rights, the wants, and the well-being of 
all. It would be distressing to all alike to find that 
any one had not as much water as he could require, 
supplied to him in the handiest way, in which it 
might be possible for the opportunities, and combined 
resources of the community to effect this. 

Different influences have been at work amongst 
ourselves. The community has not managed its own 
affairs in such a manner, and on such a footing, as 
that the wants and interests of the humbler, and more 
helpless, classes should be as much felt, and attended 
to, as the wants and interests of the well-to-do classes, 
and of those who are able to take care of themselves. 
This has hindered the importance, or rather the ne- 



2o8 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



cessity, of an abundant supply of water presenting it- 
self, generally, to men's intelligence, and conscience, as 
really one of the primal cares of the community. This 
has not been one of the points which town councils, 
and rate-payers (perhaps because they were rate- 
payers) have seen in a proper light. There has been 
something which has stood in the way of their seeing 
it at all. Then there have been influential bodies in 
every community, whose interests lay in an opposite 
direction. I mean the water companies, and the 
manufacturers, and retailers of intoxicating liquors. 
You could hardly expect them to have seen very dis- 
tinctly that it was the duty, and the interest, of the 
community to provide everywhere, and for everybody, 
a visible, constant, gratuitous supply of fresh, running, 
sparkling water. Nor, indeed, could the government 
of the country be expected to be more sharp-sighted 
in this matter than the local administrations ; for it 
had to collect an enormous revenue for the purpose of 
enabling it to pay the interest of an enormous debt. 
There was, therefore, something to indispose it, also, 
to supply a want, the supply of which must inevitably 
reduce the number of millions it was collecting, every 
year, on the production and consumption of intoxi- 
cating drinks. These are the reasons which have 
issued in the fact, that water has been kept out of, or 
not brought into, the sight of the inhabitants of our 
English towns, and villages. It was not because 



SWISS WATER-SUPPLY 



209 



water could be supplied on easier terms in Switzer- 
land than in this country, because we find as much 
attention paid to its abundant free supply in some 
other continental countries, for instance in Italy, as in 
Switzerland. 

Everyone who will give the subject a little thought 
will come to the conclusion, that it is this neglect 
which is mainly answerable for some of the pre- 
ventable maladies, and for much of the drunken- 
ness, and so of the misery and crime, which afflicts 
our working classes. The efforts that have been 
made of late years to set up drinking-fountains in 
London, and in many of our towns, is an indication 
that in this supreme matter our eyes are beginning to 
be opened. When they are completely opened, a 
public, free, inexhaustible supply of the purest possible 
water will be the first care of every community, great 
and small ; and drinking-fountains will, everywhere, 
offer an alternative to the gin-palace and public-house, 
and in winter as well as in summer. 

To the reflecting mind, the overflowing sparkling 
fountains of the Swiss towns are very pleasing 
objects. So, too, to the natural eye, and ear, 
are the brawling stream in every valley, and the 
trickling rills on every hill-side. There is water, 
water, everywhere ; and every drop to drink. This 
the pedestrian, at all events, will appreciate ; and 

P 



2io A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



when the sun is bright, he will be thankful for it a 
dozen times a day. 

At Zurich I was much interested by the public 
collection of objects, found at the bottom of the lake, 
and on the site of the old lake-villages. Herodotus 
mentions a powerful Thracian people, who dwelt in a 
similarly constructed city on Lake Prasias. The 
Irish and Scotch cranoges are also instances of ancient 
structures of the same kind. To this day, in New 
Guinea and Borneo, and in Africa, we find water- 
towns still inhabited. In all these cases it was the 
same necessity, that of providing against sudden 
attacks from more powerful neighbours, that suggested 
the idea. And if we may refer to the same class, 
the lagoon-protected infancy of Venice, then the 
Queen of the Adriatic, with her St. Mark's, and her 
palaces, owes her existence to the idea, from which 
originated, in a very old past, the little wooden huts 
of the Lake of Zurich. 

The objects which have been recovered reveal the 
habits, arts, conditions of life, and much of the internal 
history of those who formed, and used them. About 
the events of their external history, though much of 
this can be pretty well imagined, of course they are 
silent. Nor have they anything to tell us in reply to 
the questions of who the people were, whence they 
came, or what became of them ? The information 
they give us begins with the time when men, in 



OLD LAKE-VILLAGES 



211 



central Europe, had not attained to a knowledge of 
metals, and were using implements of bone and 
stone for war, hunting, and domestic purposes. Abun- 
dance of their stone tools have been found, and also of 
specimens of the work done with them. For instance, 
some of the series of piles, upon which the dwellings 
were placed, and these piles are found by the hundred, 
we see were hacked to the point, which was to fit them 
for driving, with stone chisels and hatchets. And 
then, in other series of piles, we pass on to the 
era when stone had been superseded by bronze and 
iron tools. It is very interesting to have thus before 
us the actual tools, and the actual work done with 
them, together with ocular demonstration of the way 
in which, by the superiority of their work, the first 
metal tools superseded their perfected predecessors of 
stone. 

Everything, one may almost say, has been pre- 
served, and, too, in a most wonderfully perfect state. 
Besides the tools and weapons in great variety, there 
are their nets and clothes, their pottery in jars and 
cups, and utensils for many purposes, the bones of 
the animals on which they feasted, the different kinds 
of fruit they had gathered from the forest, and of 
grain they had cultivated. In all these matters the 
old lake-dwellers have bequeathed to us the means of 
comparing notes with them. The bones that have 
been found of the ox, the sheep, and the dog show 

P 2 



212 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



that the varieties of the respective species then kept 
by the dwellers in this neighbourhood were not pre- 
cisely identical with any of their varieties now known. 
They were, too, great hunters, and game was abundant 
in the locality. Among the vast quantities of bones of 
wild animals, that have been found, are those of the 
wolf, the bear, the beaver, the wild boar, the stag, the 
European bison (which still exists in the Forest of 
Lithuania, and is the largest quadruped next after the 
rhinoceros), and of the urus, the aboriginal wild ox of 
Europe, which is now extinct. 

They were also agriculturists. One of the kinds of 
wheat they cultivated was what we call the Egyptian, or 
Mummy Wheat. Some of the specimens of this could 
not be more perfect had they been only just harvested. 
It had several small ears ranged round a main central 
ear, and from this reason sometimes goes by the name 
of the hen-and-chickens wheat It is interesting to 
know that so distinctly marked a variety was being 
cultivated at so remote a period, on the banks of the 
Lake of Zurich, by these trans-Alpine barbarians, and 
on the banks of the Nile, by the subjects of the early 
Pharaohs, at the same time. Here is a kind of pos- 
sible connection between the builders of Karnac and 
the builders of these pile-supported huts ; and also a 
point in the history of one of our Cereals, of the birth, 
parentage, and education of all of which so little is 
known. Two kinds of millet, and a six-rowed variety 



OLD LAKE-VILLAGES 



213 



of barley have also been found. These rude con- 
tributories to the ancestry of the modern European 
were at the same time collecting for food, from the 
neighbouring forests, sloes, bullaces, wild cherries, 
beech-mast, crab-apples, elder-berries, the hips of the 
wild rose, raspberries, blackberries, and hazel-nuts ; 
for well-preserved remains of all these have been 
found on the sites of the lake-villages. Some of the 
specimens are supposed to show slight differences 
from the same fruits now growing wild in the neigh- 
bourhood. These differences, if they do really exist, 
must, notwithstanding their slightness, indicate a long 
lapse of time. 

They also cultivated flax. Nets and lines made 
from it, together with the very scales of the fish the 
nets and lines caught, and the woven cloth, with the 
very fringes that decorated the dresses into which it 
had been formed, and even the weights used in 
working the looms, are all here, to teach us how 
widely spread, in very early times, were the most ne- 
cessary of the useful arts. There has, then, been no 
solution in the continuity of man's history. His wants 
were from the first substantially the same as they are 
at this day ; and these wants were from the first 
supplied by the same contrivances as at this day, with 
the difference that, in every age, the contrivances were 
raised to the level of the knowledge, and consequent 
resources, of the times. The spinning-jenny, and the 



214 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



power-loom, in a few large cities, are now doing for 
millions what the wives and daughters of these old 
lake-dwellers, seated in summer on the wooden plat- 
form above the water, and in winter within the hut, 
did for each separate family. The wants of w r hat 
appear to us as the primaeval times, but which were 
in fact very far from that, have been enlarged and 
multiplied, in proportion as man's means for meeting 
them became improved and enlarged ; and this kind 
of growth in the old wants, consequent upon growth 
in our means for supplying them, constitutes what is 
generally meant by progress. And this material 
progress it is, which makes possible moral and in- 
tellectual progress, the glory, and privilege, and happi- 
ness of man. 

One cannot help comparing these relics of the old 
lake-village with the copiously furnished stateliness of 
its modern neighbour, the city of Zurich. You set 
them, in thought, by the side of its handsome streets 
of stone houses, its rich shops, its large factories, 
especially of iron, in which labour is so skilfully or- 
ganised, and so scientifically directed, its university, 
its general intelligence, its conscious efforts to culti- 
vate, and turn to account, that intelligence, its accu- 
mulated wealth, its patriotism, its knowledge of, and 
connection with, every part of the world. But varied, 
complex, great, and interesting as all this is, still it is 
only the step now at length reached, by the labour of 



BAUR 'EN VILLE ' 



many generations, in the true and natural development 
of what was existing on the lake some thousands of 
years ago. Society, such as it was, in those old 
days, in the rude, wood-built, water-protected huts 
was the embryo of society, such as it now is in the 
proud, modern city. How natural, then, is the jealous 
care with which it guards these old relics ; for if they 
do not speak to the Zurichers of their own actual 
ancestors they show them what were the germs out 
of which has grown their present condition. 

I spoke of the large Swiss hotels exactly as they 
impressed me. I found in them nothing that was 
attractive to me. Why it was so I endeavoured to 
explain. I must, however, here note that what I then 
said is not applicable to Baur's Hotel at Zurich. I 
said as much to the manager on leaving, though I was 
sure that he must often have received similar com- 
mendation from others. The house is as well ordered 
as you would wish to see your own home. The bed- 
rooms are of a good size, and well furnished. The 
table is liberal. The cuisine good. A wholesome 
Rhenish wine is supplied at dinner. The attendants 
are clean and attentive. Everything you are likely 
to want is provided ; nor are there any traps set, or 
any wish apparent that you should call, for extras. 
For meals at irregular hours there is an excellent 
restaurant in the house, distinct from the dining salon. 



216 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



This hotel, though large, has none of the cold, hard, 
obtrusive air of its monster brethren. In short, things 
are so managed that you feel that you are in a good, 
comfortable hotel, and not in a large factory, where 
bales of travellers, yourself a bale, are undergoing the 
process^ like truck-loads of brute material, of scientific 
manipulation. I was at Baur en ville. Baur an lac, 
at a distance of three or four minutes' walk, is, I 
suppose, managed in the same fashion, and is the 
same kind of thing. 

But how about the note ? I suppose wages, and 
the price of provisions, must be much the same in 
Zurich as in other Swiss towns, but the note did not 
lighten my purse as much as experience would have led 
me to have expected. A man, then, even an innkeeper, 
may sometimes be found, whose merits are obvious to 
the world, but who enhances them — and this is true 
virtue — by himself setting a low price upon them. 

Hitherto the risings and settings of the sun had 
been, as I mentioned, almost achromatic. I suppose on 
account of the clearness of the atmosphere. But now 
a great change had taken place ; there had been falls 
of rain, and even of snow, and the air had become full 
of moisture, and there was much cloud ; in conse- 
quence, there were in the evenings some most glorious 
atmospheric fields of colour. I keep in mind one of 
these sunsets above the rest, because of the way in 



RECOLTE DES VOYAGE URS 



217 



which it placed the murky, swart outline of the ridges 
and peaks of the Jura in contrast with the usual 
oranges and reds above, but which, though seen so 
often, one never tires of looking at. It is almost 
enough to condemn a country house, that the sunset 
cannot be seen from it. 

I have another reason for recollecting this sun- 
set. I was with several persons at the moment who 
were observing it together. Among these were two 
Swiss gentlemen. But in the change of weather 
which it indicated, they only saw a hint that this 
year's recolte des voyageurs, as they phrased it, was 
drawing to a close : a true harvest, which costs 
Switzerland little, and is got in with not unthrifty 
husbandry, and which one is glad should benefit so 
many, both among those who do the harvesting, and 
among those who are harvested. A French gentle- 
man, however, who happened to be present, and had 
been spending the summer on the banks of the Lake 
of Geneva — it might be inferred that his recollections 
of the way in which he had himself been harvested, 
were not in all respects pleasant — turned to me with 
the aside, Cest un pauvre pays. 



218 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



CHAPTER XVI. 

A REMARK ON SWISS EDUCATION 
The proper study of mankind is man. — Pope. 

It has long been my practice, wherever I find my- 
self, to inquire into the provisions made for education, 
and into the modes of teaching adopted; and, also, by 
observation, and talking to the people themselves, to 
do what , I can, as far as opportunities go, to collect 
materials for enabling me to form an opinion on the 
results and fruits of what has been done. I did this 
wherever I was on this excursion ; and as it was my 
object in going to Zurich to see its Polytechnic Uni- 
versity, I will here give one of the conclusions I came 
to on the subject of Swiss education. 

It was constructed by the Swiss to suit their own 
wants. That it does admirably well. Such a system, 
however, would be very far from suiting equally well 
that large class amongst ourselves, who are destined for 
either a public life, or for what may be called the semi- 
public life of our men of property, and of a large pro- 
portion of those whose special work is that of one of 



SWISS EDUCATION 



219 



the learned professions : at all events, both law and 
divinity, as practised in this country, have direct con- 
nections with political life. The Swiss, however, are a 
small, and a poor people, whose affairs are, in the 
main, managed locally. They have no need of 
trained statesmen ; they have no haute politique, 
Speaking generally, they are a nation of peasant-pro- 
prietors, artizans, manufacturers, and tradesmen. At 
present, in many parts of the country, the only tritons 
among the minnows are the innkeepers. Manufac- 
tures, which mean also commerce, are, here and there, 
introducing a moneyed class ; and the hundreds of 
thousands of pounds, spent every year in the country, 
by tens of thousands of travellers, are enriching bankers, 
and, through many channels, many others. Now the 
education such a people requires is one that will make 
intelligent artizans, intelligent manufacturers, and in- 
telligent tradesmen ; and which will give to that 
portion of the population for whom work cannot be 
found at home, sufficient intelligence to dispose them 
to go into foreign countries ; and will enable them, 
when there, to take their bread out of the mouths of 
the inhabitants of those countries. This is what the 
Swiss system aims at doing. And wherever it is well 
carried out, — of course this is done much better in 
the Protestant than in the Catholic cantons, — it attains 
its aim. In many of the Catholic cantons the people 
are content to be as their fathers were ; they do not 



220 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



see very distinctly the advantage of cultivating the 
intelligence of their children ; and it cannot be sup- 
posed that the village priest will be very forward in 
enlightening them on this point. 

What the Swiss system, true to its object, sets 
itself to teach is the languages that will be useful in 
business, arithmetic, mathematics, the principles of 
the useful arts, and the elements of the sciences. All 
this is just what will enable the Swiss to get on in the 
careers that will be open to them. They are an 
intensely practical people ; and these thoroughly 
practical subjects they take care shall be taught 
sufficiently for the purpose they have in view. They 
have no idea of not getting their pennyworth for their 
penny. Their philanthropy, and their love of home, 
the unfailing and fruitful source of so many virtues, 
make them desirous of giving every chance to their 
children ; and they are interested in, and proud of, 
and spend their money on, their schools for their 
children's sake. All this is just as it should be. It is 
a very good thing for them ; and, as far as it goes, it 
would be a very good thing for us, if we had the same 
system at work here. It is exactly what is wanted 
for nine-tenths of our population ; and what they 
must have if we are to keep our place in the world. 
But when this shall have been done, if there is ever to 
be a time w T hen it will have been done, there will still 
remain one-tenth of our population, a number equal 



SWISS EDUCATION 221 

to, or greater than, that of the whole Swiss nation, 
which will be capable of receiving, and will need for 
the life that will be before them, something different 
from, and higher than, a Swiss education. 

The Swiss system is large and liberal for a trades- 
man ; it almost makes of him a gentleman. But for an 
English gentleman it would be narrow and illiberal 
It would not properly qualify him for the careers that 
are open to him, and for the life that is before him. 
It is not the kind of culture that will produce states- 
men, jurists, divines, orators, poets, historians, literary 
lay teachers, or philosophers. If, by the grace of 
nature, an English boy had been intended for any 
one of these vocations, to bring him up in the Swiss 
fashion would be to rob him of his birthright : and the 
more thoroughly the system had been applied to him, 
the more complete would be the robbery, and the 
greater the injustice and the injury. 

An English gentleman has not been properly 
qualified for what is his work in life, unless his educa- 
tion has been such as to make him acquainted with 
the history of man, and with what may be called the 
sciences of humanity. By the sciences of humanity I 
mean ethics, economics, polity, jurisprudence, the 
history of opinion, the history of literature, dialectics, 
oratory. An acquaintance with these is what, from 
the first, should be kept in view. They should be 
worked up to from the beginning of the process, for 



222 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



they are the crown and completion of the mental 
training he will require. They are that training. And 
this is just what our system, not from intelligent and 
deliberate design, but from a happy accident, does in 
some degree attempt It provides for it in the study 
of the history of Greece and Rome, two of the most 
important and instructive developments of the history 
of man ; and, furthermore, in the direct study of some 
of the above-mentioned sciences. I say it does this 
not so much by intelligent design, as by a happy acci- 
dent, because that it is doing it at this day is merely 
the result of our having retained the classical system 
our forefathers established at a time when there was 
nothing else to teach ; and which they established 
just because there was nothing else to teach then. 
We may now, knowing what we want, and what 
materials we have to work with, very much enlarge 
and improve their system. We may advance from the 
classics to general history and humanity ; of course 
still retaining the classics, which contain the most im- 
portant chapters in the history of the fortunes, of the 
culture, and of the mind of man. And this, which is 
just what we ought to do, is what, perhaps, we shall do, 
when we come to understand what it is that gives it 
its value, and makes it indispensable for us. 

Another capital defect in a system, such as that of 
the Swiss, is that it does not cultivate, but rather 
represses and deadens., the imagination. This is the 



ENGLISH EDUCATION 



223 



instrument of the creative faculty in man, that in 
which we make the nearest approach to, and which 
gives to man in the form and degree possible for him, 
the plastic power that is exhibited to us in the richness, 
and diversity, of nature. It is this which makes a man 
myriad-minded ; which enables him to look at things 
from all sides, and to see them in all lights ; to regard 
them as minds most unlike his own regard them ; to 
be in his single self all men to all things ; it is what 
gives insight ; and the power of forming accurate and 
distinct conceptions of things in the three forms of 
what they actually are, of what they have been, and 
of what, with reference to other conceptions that have 
a bearing upon them, they ought to be. A man can- 
not be a poet, an orator, an artist, hardly an inventor, 
or discoverer, an historian, or a statesman, without the 
exercise of this faculty. His rank in any one of these 
fields of intellectual work will depend on the degree 
to which it has been developed within him ; and the 
kind of discipline it is under. Our system, in a rough, 
and haphazard, kind of away, and again more by acci- 
dent than by intelligent, deliberate design, does some- 
thing for its cultivation, by the study of the poets and 
orators of Greece and Rome ; and by attempts 
at poetical composition. This is good as far as 
it goes ; but insufficient for the great purpose. And 
this insufficiency of the means we are employing is 
aggravated, when they have to be applied under the 



224 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

direction of masters and tutors, who possibly, and 
probably, too, have never given a thought to the nature 
and purposes of the imaginative faculty ; and, there- 
fore, are, of course, equally heedless of the right 
methods of using the means, that happen to be in their 
hands, for awakening, cultivating, and strengthening it. 

Its proper cultivation in these times should not be 
confined to the poetry of the old world. That is valu- 
able, not merely on account of its perfectness of form, 
but because it is one-sided, unchristian, and narrow. 
It is the poetry of a small, highly privileged class, 
when that small class was everything, and the bulk of 
mankind nothing. It is not the poetry of humanity 
broadly. The recognition of the humanity of all men 
equally constitutes one essential difference between 
the modern and the old world. And this limited, and 
somewhat abnormal, humanity of the ancient poetry is, 
furthermore, somewhat unconnected with a knowledge 
of, and love for, nature — the milieu of man. All this 
makes it very valuable as a study of a distinct develop- 
ment, under peculiar circumstances, of the poetic 
faculty. But it is insufficient. It is no substitute for 
an acquaintance with the poetry of the modern world; 
which, too, it should follow, and not precede. That is 
the truer and more normal development. It has ad- 
ditional roots, a wider range, a larger inspiration ; it 
takes cognizance of what is in man, irrespective of con- 
ditions, or rather under every condition : and it also 



PHYSICAL SCIENCE 225 

consciously regards man and nature connectedly ; 
man's internal nature, and nature external to man, are 
to its apprehension correlated. Here, too, it has re- 
ceived a new revelation. 

And the attempt to turn a child's mind in the 
direction of nature, and to give him some general 
acquaintance with nature, and with modern poetry,, 
would be invaluable for another reason : for not only 
is this now necessary, as an indispensable part of 
mental culture for all, being a part of the rightful 
mental inheritance of those whose lot is cast in these 
times, but because experience has taught us that there 
are many minds, which have no aptitude for the 
acquisition of languages, either from some congenital 
defects, or, as is most probable, from some faults and 
omissions of early teaching and associations — but 
whatever may have been in their cases the cause is a 
matter of no consequence now : the mischief exists, 
and cannot be removed. Still, though deficient to 
this extent, they may have no disinclination for the 
study of nature : that, in the young, can hardly be 
possible. Here, then, is something that will enable 
them to live a not unworthy intellectual life. It is 
necessary for all : as a part of complete culture for 
those who are capable of complete culture ; and, for 
those who are not, as a sufficient culture. 

The advocates of the continuance — to the extent 

Q 



226 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



and for the purposes I have indicated — of classical 
study will labour under a great and unfair disad- 
vantage, as long as the classics shall be taught with 
but slight perception, on the part of those who teach 
them, of their bearing on the higher work of the day. 
As long as the main object of our public schools shall 
continue to be professedly linguistic, and that, too, in 
a somewhat narrow, and shallow fashion; and their 
tone, sometimes a little ostentatiously, at variance with 
that of the world, and of the day, for the work of which 
they ought to be a preparation (it was so with them 
originally) so long will the advocacy of classical studies 
be unfairly weighted with a sense of the justice of the 
charge of unreality brought against them, as now 
conducted. Whereas in the advocates of modern 
knowledge as the object and instrument of education, 
and in its teachers, there is none of this unreality, or 
want of connexion with the thought, and with the 
work, of the world that is stirring around us. We, 
however, hold that it is a different department of 
work and thought, to which the latter training mainly 
and primarily applies. A public man need not, as 
a public man, know anything of astronomy and 
geology ; though, of course, he is behind the age, and 
his culture is incomplete, if he does not. Of all such 
subjects he ought, as an educated man, to have a 
general knowledge ; and he will also be the better, as a 
public man, for having it ; but what is primarily and 



EXACT KNOWLEDGE 



227 



indispensably required of him is a knowledge of man, 
and of all kinds of social phenomena in their whole 
range ; what they are, how they came to be what they 
are, and how they affect man. Here his knowledge 
should be full and precise : and a very valuable part 
of this knowledge is contained in the literature of the 
old world. He ought to have lived through those ages. 
To have done so is a vast extension of experience of 
the most useful kind. But he cannot have lived through 
those times, unless he is familiar with the feelings and 
thoughts, and actions of the men of those times, to- 
gether with the circumstances, and conditions, under 
which they so thought, and felt, and acted. And he 
cannot have this familiarity unless he has a knowledge 
of the very words, in which they, themselves, expressed, 
and described, those feelings, thoughts, and actions. 

One word more. There is no knowledge so valu- 
able as that of what is knowledge ; nor any intellectual 
habit so valuable as that which disposes us in every 
thing to require knowledge, and to separate that which 
is knowledge from that which is not. Theoretically, 
there is no reason why either the study of language, 
or theology, should not be made a training for this 
knowledge, and for this habit But as this is a matter 
of practice, as well as of theory, we must look at things 
as they are, and see where what we want is actually 
found, and what has in those cases produced it ; 
and where there has been a failure in producing it^ 

Q2 



228 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



and what has been in those cases the cause of this 
failure. Who, then, are most conspicuous for knowing 
in what knowledge consists, and for the habit of 
requiring knowledge as a ground for thought and 
action, and for being ever on the alert to separate 
knowledge from its counterfeits ? No one, I think, 
would hesitate in replying, those who have had some 
scientific training. And it is easy to see how scientific 
training gives this knowledge, and this habit. It 
makes no difference what the matter of the study be, 
whether the stars, or the fungi ; whether the physiology 
of man, or of an earth-worm. The object is soon seen 
to be truth ; and the motive is soon felt to be the satis- 
faction which truth gives to the mind, and the desire 
to escape, in the practical order, from the wasteful- 
ness, and the mischief of error. Whatever, therefore, 
is necessary for the attainment of truth is submitted 
to, or acquired, or eliminated, or avoided, in accordance 
with the exigency of each case. In these pursuits men 
learn to guard against appearances that they may not 
be misled by them ; to sift evidence ; to distinguish 
facts from supposed, or alleged, facts ; to observe 
patiently and closely ; to suspend judgment ; to dis- 
tinguish probability from certainty; to distinguish 
different degrees of probability ; to distinguish what 
they know from what they wish ; not to wish for any- 
thing but ascertained and demonstrable truth ; to 
examine everything, and to hold fast only that which 



EXACT KNOWLEDGE 



229 



is demonstrably true ; to guard against ambiguities in 
words ; to use words for photographing facts, and not 
to make them a mist which obscures both the object of 
inquiry, and the paths which lead to it. As a matter 
of observation, and of fact, these are the habits of 
mind, which the scientific study of any subject incul- 
cates, and makes natural to a man. They become his 
second nature. Of course they ought to be the nature 
of all educated people. And when a man's mind has 
been thus trained in the study, scientifically pursued, of 
any one subject, he applies these habits to the consider- 
ation of all other subjects, with which he may have to 
do : to those, with which he is not familiar, he addresses 
himself with the same ideas, and the same ways of 
thinking, as he does to that, with which he is familiar. 
He knows what knowledge is ; and, while he can 
suspend his judgment, he cannot be satisfied with 
anything but knowledge. What he does not know 
upon these subjects he knows that he does not know. 
The study of language, and theology, if scientifically 
taught, are doubtless capable of supplying this training, 
but looking at our educated classes generally, and at 
those who have had administered to them the greatest 
amount of these two studies, it does not appear that 
the desired effect has been produced. If, then, these 
things are so, here is both something that should be 
an object, and something that is a defect, as things 
now are, in our higher education. 



230 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ELSASS — LOTHRINGEN — METZ — GRAVELOTTE — MOTHER OF 
THE CUR£ OF STE. MARIE AUX CHENES — WATERLOO. 

It is a just award 
That they who take, should perish by, the sword. 

I INCLUDED Mulhouse, Colmar, Strasbourg, Bitche, 
and Metz in my homeward journey. As I passed 
along, the higher peaks of the Vosges were white 
with recently fallen snow r . It is not, however, the 
forest-clad mountains, and their snow-capped summits 
which interest most the thought of the traveller, as he 
traverses this district, now, but the consequences of 
that recent transference of power, of which the names 
just written down remind him : the cotton industry of 
Mulhouse and Colmar ; the astonishing agricultural 
wealth of the neighbourhood of Strasbourg, where the 
land yields, side by side, in singular luxuriance the five 
agricultural products, sugar-beet, hops, wine, tobacco, 
and maize, which in Europe pay the best ; the strate- 
gical importance, and military strength, of Strasbourg, 
Bitche, and Metz ; the variety of the manufactures, and 



ELS A SS—L 0 TH RING EN 



231 



of the agricultural resources, of the country round 
Metz ; and, more than all this wealth and strength, the 
people themselves of these districts, who were the 
manliest, the most industrious, and the most thriving 
part of the population of France. One can, at present, 
hardly estimate rightly the value of what has thus been 
taken from France, and given, if the expression may be 
allowed, to her natural enemy. Still it was France 
herself that laid this incalculable stake upon the table : 
her portion of the left bank of the Rhine against Prus- 
sia's ; and insisted on the game being played. And the 
chances were against her. She had acquired Stras- 
bourg by amazing treachery ; and now the ignorance, 
arrogance, and vice by which she was to lose it, were 
equally amazing. And this war of 1870-71 was a 
natural sequel of the wrongs the first Napoleon did to 
Germany. That it was that had obliged the Ger- 
mans to devote themselves to military organisa- 
tion, and to understand the necessity of national 
union ; and which was hardening their will, and 
nerving their arm. As to the French, one would be 
glad to find that they were delivering themselves 
from those causes in themselves, which led to their 
great catastrophe. But the existing generation cannot 
expect to see the day, when the rural population of 
France will have attained to more enlightenment than 
they have at present, and its city population to more 
rational ideas of liberty, justice, and truth, than they 



332 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



have exhibited hitherto ; for the lives of the former 
are too hard, and the latter are too fanatical, to admit 
of much immediate improvement in either. 

I stopped at Metz to see the battle-field of Grave- 
lotte. I went over it with two Englishmen, who had 
come to Metz for the same purpose. We were pro- 
vided with maps, and plans, and narratives of the 
great battle. It was a bright fine day. We started 
at 8.30 A.M., and did not get back to Metz till 5 P.M. 
It requires, at least, six hours to go over the field, 
including the hour you stop at Ste. Marie aux Chenes 
for baiting your horses, and for luncheon. 

The French ground was well chosen for a defensive 
battle. It was along the ridge of the rising ground, 
facing to the west, from St. Privat and Roncour on 
their right, to the high ground opposite to, and behind 
St. Hubert, on their left. St. Hubert was a farm- 
house in the depression. It had a walled garden. 
This ground was about five miles in length. Early in 
the day the Germans occupied only a part of the 
ground in front of the French position, beginning at 
Gravelotte, a little to the south-west of the French 
left. At this time there was no enemy in front of the 
French right. The ground here, rendered strong by 
a line of detached farm-houses, woods, and villages, 
was occupied by French outposts. From all these 
they were driven, in succession, by the extension 
of the German left. The strongest position here, 



GRAVELOTTE 



233 



and in it much hard fighting took place, was the 
village of Ste. Marie aux Chenes, The Germans first 
attacked the French left at St. Hubert. From this 
they drove them out One can hardly understand 
how they managed to get possession of it, for the 
French occupied the high ground all round it. To 
march upon it was like marching into the bottom of 
a bowl to attack a strong place in the bottom, com- 
manded by the enemy's cannon from every part of 
the rim. Having, however, established themselves 
here, they advanced up the hill against the French 
left. But, though they were repulsed, they were not 
driven out of St. Hubert. In the evening, the Germans, 
having established themselves along the front of the 
French right, and having even somewhat outflanked it, 
attacked them at St. Privat and Roncour. Here was 
most desperate fighting ; and one, while standing on 
the ground, is surprised that any troops could have 
faced what the Germans had to go through, Their 
advance was made up a perfectly smooth, and open, 
incline, three-quarters of a mile across, the whole of it 
completely swept, and commanded by the French 
cannon, mitrailleuse, and Chassepots, which we must 
recollect killed some hundreds of yards further than 
the needle-gun. A Saxon corps, that had been com- 
ing up with forced marches, in the evening reached 
this point, and went straight up the hill. In fourteen 
minutes half its strength was hors dtt combat. There is 



234 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



a monument on the spot to those who fell here. The 
whole field is full of German monuments, for wherever 
their men fell, there they were buried ; and there a 
monument has since been raised to their memory. At 
last the French right was driven off this ground, and 
out of the strong village of St. Privat behind it. It 
was now dark. The French were in no position, or 
condition, to renew the fight the next day ; and so, 
during the night, they withdrew to Metz, leaving their 
material behind. They had fought a defensive battle, 
which suited neither the character of their troops, nor 
the circumstances of their position. 

At Ste. Marie aux Chenes, where we stopped an 
hour for luncheon, we spent part of the time in walk- 
ing about the village, and looking at the traces of the 
fight. It is a large village, every house of which has 
thick rubble or stone walls. All the buildings in it 
were occupied strongly by the French ; and all were, 
successively, carried. It was a from house-to-house 
and hand-to-hand fight. We found all the doors, 
window-shutters, and window-frames in the place, new, 
because the old ones had been battered in, hacked to 
pieces, and destroyed by the Germans, as they forced 
their way into each house separately. No prisoners 
were taken. 

Among other spots we visited here was a little 
enclosed space, where the Germans had buried their 
dead. While we were looking at the grave of a young 



THE MOTHER OF THE CURE 



235 



Englishman of the name of Annesly — Von Annesly 
he is called on the stone — who had fallen in the as- 
sault on the village— he had attained to the rank of 
lieutenant in the German service — an elderly peasant 
woman approached ; and, on finding that we were not 
Germans, freely entered into conversation with us. 
She soon told us that she was the mother of 
the Cure of the village. She had been one among 
the few inhabitants of the place, who, having taken 
refuge in cellars, had remained in it during the 
assault. She was very communicative, and invited 
us to accompany her to her house, where she showed 
us, with touching pride, their best tea service, and 
the church ornaments, which are used on fete days. 
The best room in the house had been appropriated 
to their safe keeping, and exhibition. The china 
service had been a present, what we should call a 
testimonial, and was placed, en evidence, on a table 
in the middle of the room. The church ornaments 
were arranged on a large sofa. They consisted 
of artificial flowers moulded in porcelain, with a 
great deal of gilding. The good woman then took 
us into the study ; M. le Cure's study, as she was 
careful to tell us. She never referred to M. le Cure, 
and her thoughts were never far from him, without a 
smile of satisfied motherly emotion playing over her 
face. Those were M. le Cure's books. There were 
about half-a-dozen. That was the table at which M. 



236 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 

ie Cure sometimes wrote. That garden, the outer 
door of the study opened upon it, was a beautiful 
garden, which M. le Cure worked in himself. M. le 
Cure was now absent from home, for the purpose of 
making a collection for the purchase of a figure of the 
Virgin, to commemorate her goodness in having 
miraculously saved the Church, when so much injury 
had been done to every other building in the place : 
but the church in the neighbouring village we saw had 
been burnt during the assault upon it. The good 
villagers had been very liberal in their contributions 
for the purchase of the figure. The sum, however, 
mentioned as their contributions, amounted only to a 
few francs. Still it might have been much for them 
to give, for they may not have been much in the 
habit of giving. M. le Cure s study, the scene of his 
peaceful and sacred studies, had been made a hospital. 
There, just where he always sits, a limb had been 
amputated. Here, and there, on the floor wounded men 
had died. The floor of M. le Cure s study had been 
stained with blood. One memento of that fearful day 
had been preserved. It was a small hole in the door 
through which a bullet had passed : but that was a 
bullet that had hurt nobody. I shall never think of 
the field of Gravelotte without a pleasing recollection 
of the mother of the Cure of Ste. Marie aux Chenes. 
She was a tall woman with what seemed a hard face, 
but at every mention of M. le Cure, or of the Holy 



GERMAN COMPENSATIONS 



237 



Virgin, it was lighted up, and softened. She wore a 
faded cotton dress, and a weather-stained, coalscuttle- 
shaped straw bonnet — her grandmother, perhaps, had 
once been proud of it — but the reflection of her 
simple, motherly, happy heart on her face, refined both 
face and dress. The heart's ease only was noticed. 

The Germans have done, and are doing, every- 
thing that could be done, to restore to the people what 
they lost during the war. They have, in these parts, 
repaired every house and building that admitted of 
repair ; and completely rebuilt all that had been too 
much injured for repair. They have thus given many 
new lamps for very old ones. They have not yet re- 
built the Church of St. Privat, because the people 
themselves have not yet decided, whether they wish 
the new one to be the fac-simile of the old one, or a 
larger structure, such as the increased population of 
the modern village requires : the familiar opposition 
between those who are afraid to acknowledge that the 
world has made any advances, and those who see 
nothing objectionable in advances, or in accommodat- 
ing themselves to them. Of the other injuries, the 
people in these parts had sustained by the war, they 
were asked to make an estimate themselves. Half of 
their estimates was immediately paid to them ; and 
they were told that the remaining half would be paid, 
after the 1st of October, on their having decided to 
become German citizens. The inhabitants of the 



238 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



villages round Metz had had their corn, and cattle, and 
horses swept off by the French Commissariat. These 
poor people the Germans fed during the siege with 
provisions brought from Germany. I could not hear 
in Metz, or in the neighbourhood, of a single instance 
of a German soldier having been seen drunk, or that 
any act of violence could be charged against them ; 
nor could I hear even of oppression or harshness of 
any kind. 

Metz, with its central arsenal, and its outer circle 
of apparently impregnable hill fortresses, gives you 
the idea of a place which nature had formed expressly 
for this gunpowder era, intending that its owners 
should fortify it, and use it as a rallying place for 
defeated armies — the armies, not of a small, but of a 
great nation ; where they might in safety collect their 
shattered fragments ; and, having re-organised and 
re-equipped themselves, might again take the field for 
fresh efforts. In the days of bows and spears it could 
not have had this value, which it may lose when our 
present instruments of war shall have been superseded 
by discoveries not yet dreamt of; but, although the 
French were not able to turn the place to such an ac- 
count, still this seems to be one of the uses that may be 
made of it by its possessors : besides being an impreg- 
nable advanced post for the invasion of a neighbour. 

The Cathedral is far too short for its height. It 
contains some windows of very good old stained glass. 



THOUGHTS IN CATHEDRAL OF METZ 239 



The only person I saw in it was an American. Shall 
I say that we had both come to see it, just as we 
might go to see some curious object in a museum ? 
I, at all events, accused myself of something of this 
kind, for I had a consciousness of the discord between 
such a purpose, and the history and character of the 
structure. For however much it may now have the 
appearance of a thing unused, and unloved, and from 
which the soul has fled, yet was it built to satisfy a 
want, in the religious order, which all men longed to 
satisfy ; and to give visible expression to a feeling, 
which then stirred every heart. Not anything else, 
not money, not power, could have built it ; that is to 
say, could have summoned into existence the senti- 
ments, of which the building is an embodiment. 

But on this occasion its clustered columns, its 
groined roof, its lofty aisles, its jewelled light, trans- 
ported my thoughts only to Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle; 
for I found myself endeavouring to understand and 
measure the difference between the two : but the 
endeavour brought me to see, under so much outward 
diversity, only an inward identity. They are both 
equally the result of the desire to form elevated and 
right conceptions of God — the focal name in which all 
elevated and right conceptions meet ; and so to open 
the heart and mind, as that these elevated and right 
conceptions, which have been projected from them, 
may react upon them. This is Religion, the Spiritual 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



Kfe, ki their simplest expression, in their inner form. 
In the ages of Faith, as they have been called, the 
most effectual way of attaining the desired end was 
through the eye ; that is to say, the means, that could 
then be used with most effect, was art, in architecture, 
sculpture, painting, music. In the then state of the heart 
and of the imagination these best stirred and attuned 
them. Hence the Cathedral, and all that is implied 
in it. In these days, not of the knowledge, or of the 
conditions of life, or of the faith, of the old kinds, the 
most effectual means, especially among the lower 
strata of the middle class, is not art, which would have 
no power over them, but such direct appeals to their 
understandings and consciences, as will not be beyond 
their capacities. Hence Mr. Spurgeon and his Taber- 
nacle, But the object is in both one and the same. 

No sooner, however, had I come to this, w T hich 
seemed for a moment to be a conclusion, than my 
thoughts entered the reverse process, and the identity 
I had been contemplating was transformed into 
diversity. The juxtaposition, in the mind's eye, of 
the Cathedral and of the Tabernacle suggested a dif- 
ference, if not in the elements of religion itself, yet, at 
all events, in the modes through which different re- 
ligious systems have attempted to act on the world. 
The Cathedral seemed to represent two modes : that 
which may for convenience be called, using the word 
in a good sense, the heathen mode ; that is to say, 



THOUGHTS IN CATHEDRAL OF METZ 241 

culture, but in the form only of art ; and the priestly, or 
Judaical, mode, which means organization. Its grand 
and beautiful structure grew out of the former, through 
the aid of the latter. The Tabernacle represents a 
totally different mode — the prophetical ; and prophesy- 
ing is the principle of life, of growth, and of development 
in religion. We see this throughout the history both 
of the Old and of the New Dispensation. Romanism 
has killed this vital principle ; and is, therefore, as 
good as, or worse than, dead ; for it has a bad odour. 
It is now all dead heathenism, and dead organization: 
a gilt and gaily painted monstrous iron machine, 
which can be set at work, but which has no heart. 
This explains everything. This is the key that unlocks 
its whole modern history. Its long ghastly list of 
persecutions, its Inquisition, its St. Bartholemew's, 
its Infallible Monocracy, are all alike logically de- 
ducible from the determination to live by other 
means than that of prophesying ; in fact, utterly to 
suppress the one means of life, and to live, if such 
a thing were possible, by those means only which 
have not life in themselves. But Persecutions, In- 
quisitions, St. Bartholemew's, and Infallibility can be 
of no avail : for prophesying has always and every- 
where been, and will always and eveiywhere be, the 
life of religion ; and, therefore, destructive, sooner or 
later, of all cast-iron systems. With respect to the 
Tabernacle, it is not so much that it has rejected the 

R 



242 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



other two modes, as that it has no comprehension of 
their nature and use. It never, therefore, has either 
risen to the level of ordinary culture, or organized it- 
self as a religious system. It makes no appeal to the 
former, and, Wesleyanism excepted, no use of the 
latter. This explains why, though not devoid of life, 
it is without form, and without attractive power for 
refined minds. Christianity, it is evident, in its early 
days depended entirely on prophesying. As it grew, 
having at that time the living power of assimilating 
what it needed, it borrowed organization from Judaism, 
and culture and art from heathenism : but prophesying 
must always be the distinctively Christian mode ; so 
long as Christianity addresses itself to what is in 
man, that is, to his knowledge and moral consciousness. 

Which, therefore, of these modes is the best is 
an inquiry, which would be somewhat sterile, and 
misleading ; for each is good in its proper place, 
and degree, and for its proper purpose ; and under 
some circumstances one, and under other circum- 
stances another, will inevitably be resorted to. It 
would be more profitable to keep in mind that not 
one is ever exempt in its use from error and per- 
version. These, at every turn and step, will reappear, 
as* the unavoidable results of the imperfections of 
those, in whose hands the administration of religion, 
as of all human affairs, must rest : for they are but 
men ; and, Error and Perversion, you both have the 
same name, and that name is Man. History, and ex- 



THOUGHTS IN CATHEDRAL OF ME TZ 243 

perience, teach us that, in the long run, the most 
efficient check to these errors and perversions, both 
in those who minister, and in those who are ministered 
to, is, as far as is possible in this world of necessarily 
mixed motives, and defective knowledge, to be dead 
unto self, and alive unto God, that is to the good 
work one finds set before one. Herein is the true 
apostolism : not for self, but for the end for which 
one was sent — for an object, beyond self, distinctly 
seen, and distinctly good. This in an individual is 
almost, and in a body of men perhaps quite, impos- 
sible. Still it is just what always has to be done by 
' the Church,' which, in whatever sense we take the 
word, will be a body of men ; and by Mr. Spurgeon, 
acting with those who believe in him ; and, therefore, 
whenever attempted, will only be done very imper- 
fectly. So it must be. But we see that, notwithstand- 
ing, the world has advanced, and is advancing. In 
* the Church,' and among the Spurgeons and their 
respective people, and among others, who cannot be 
quite correctly ranged under either of these categories, 
there will always be some (generally a very small 
minority ; but these are not questions that can be 
decided by counting hands) who have caught partial 
glimpses of what ought to be said and done, and who 
will set themselves the task, generally a very thankless 
one, of making their partial glimpses known. One 
thing, however, at all events is certain : it is safer to 

R 2 



244 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



trust to the Spirit of the Prophet than to the culture 
and organization of the Priest, if they must be had 
separately : though, perhaps, their due combination, 
might be best of all. 

These were the thoughts which passed through 
my mind, while I was in the Cathedral of Metz ; for 
the American, who came in just after I had entered 
it, required but a very few minutes for 6 doing ' this 
grand old monument of mediaeval piety ; and soon 
left it to the twilight — the day was nearly run out 
—and to my twilight meditations. 

The Hotel de l'Europe, the best in Metz, is not 
good. The head -waiter — he was an Austrian — 
was so imperious that I soon found it advisable, 
whenever I had occasion to ask him a question, to 
apologise for the trouble I was giving him. The 
angular peg had been put into the round hole, 
Nature had intended him for a German prince. 
They charge here for a two-horse carriage to Grave- 
lotte, including the driver, two Napoleons. At this 
rate they must get back, one would think, every week 
the original cost of the rickety vehicle and half-starved 
horses. There is, however, but little competition in 
the matter of the imperious waiter, and none at all in 
that of the costly carriage he provides for you. 

At Metz, and I heard that it was so, generally, 
throughout both the annexed provinces, a great many 
people were desirous of selling their houses and land. 
There was not, however, by any means an equal 



WILL FRANCE RECOVER HER PROVINCES 245 



number of people who were desirous of purchasing. 
This fewness of purchasers indicates the prevalence 
of an opinion that the loss of these provinces is far 
too great for France ever to acquiesce in ; and that, 
therefore, she will, on the first opportunity that may 
offer, endeavour to recover them by the sword : in 
which case they will become the theatre of war. It 
is true that the course of events in the New World, 
as well as in the Old, has taught the present genera- 
tion, very impressively, the lesson that w r hat is ex- 
pected is seldom what happens ; still, one may say, of 
course with a strong feeling of the uncertainty of 
human affairs, that there is nothing apparent, at pre- 
sent, on the surface of things, to give rise to the sup- 
position that a second reference, on the part of the 
French, to the arbitrament of the sword, would lead 
to a different issue from that which the first had. 
Empire is maintained, and retained, by the means by 
which it was obtained ; and there seems no probability 
of Germany ever allowing herself to be caught nap- 
ping ; or of her strength, energy, and determination 
being sapped by national corruption. That is not a 
consummation which the solid character of the people 
renders at all likely. Even their rude climate, which, 
to some extent, forbids a life of sensuous and vicious 
self-indulgence, will, we may think, help them in the 
future to maintain the character, which has always 
distinguished them hitherto ; it seems to make earnest- 
ness, and mental hardihood, natural to them. One's 



246 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



thoughts on this subject would be very much modi- 
fied, if there were in France any symptoms, which 
might lead one to hope that she was 6 coming to her- 
self/ 

On leaving Metz, by an early train, I had to form 
one in a scene of crowding and confusion greater than 
I had ever elsewhere encountered on that side of the 
Channel, except a few days before at Strasbourg, where 
it was as bad. We are often told that the advantage 
of the foreign system of over-administration is that 
everything of this kind is rendered impossible ; but 
here it was all in excess. Tickets for all classes were 
issued by the same clerk, and for two trains at the same 
time, for one was to start only a few minutes before 
the other. Some people were pushing ; some were in 
a high state of excitement. There was no possibility 
of forming a queue. I was told that this, and many 
other things of the same kind, would be set right after 
the 1st of October, on which day the Germans would 
take all these matters into their own hands. Hitherto 
they had interfered with the local administration as 
little as possible. One consequence of this had 
been that the existing authorities, whose reign was so 
soon to expire, had not been very attentive to their 
duties ; perhaps they had not been very desirous of 
keeping things straight ; and the lower orders, availing 
themselves of the license that had been permitted, 
had become so insubordinate, that it had been found 



BRUSSELS 



247 



difficult, in some cases impossible, to carry on the 
operations of factories, in which many hands were 
employed. But after the 1st of October there was to 
be an end of all this : a German burgomaster was to 
be appointed, and German order was to be maintained. 
On that morning I wished that, as far as the station 
at Metz was concerned, the change had already been 
effected. 

In the neighbourhood of Luxembourg, I saw 
several trains full of iron ore. From Luxembourg 
to Namur the country is, generally, very poor. It 
consists mainly of limestone hills, heaths, and woods 
in which there is little or no good timber. Between 
Namur and Brussels the country improves, agricultu- 
rally, very much. 

At Brussels I had some difficulty in getting a 
bed ; all the hotels being full of Belgian and English 
volunteers, and of people who had come to see the 
international shooting. There had just been a public 
reception of volunteers, and everybody was in the 
streets. I heard a burly tradesman, who was standing 
at the door of his shop, shout at the top of his voice, 
but the result did not correspond with the effort, as 
one of our volunteers was passing, in the uniform of 
a Scottish corps, ' Shotland for ever ' — the land, 
doubtless, of good shots. Etymologists, consider this, 
and be cautious. 

The much-lauded Hotel de Ville I venture to 



248 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



think unsatisfactory. For so much ornamentation it 
is deficient in size. Its chief external feature is the 
multitude of figures upon it. The effect of this is 
bad. One sees no reason why they should be there. 
They are too small. They are indistinguishable 
from each other, There is no action : merely rows of 
figures. This was unavoidable in the position as- 
signed them, but its being unavoidable was no reason 
for assigning them that position, nor does it at all 
contribute towards rendering them pleasing objects. 

Many of the volunteers made a night of it in 
honour of their English visitors. Having been woke, 
by their shouting and hurraing in the streets, at one 
o'clock in the morning, I was disposed to think such 
demonstrations unbecoming in bearded warriors. 

I went with a party of Englishmen, and some 
Americans, to Waterloo. We were driven over the 
old, straight, stone-paved, poplar-bordered road, by an 
English whip, in an English four-horse stage-coach. 
The road is just what it was, when Wellington passed 
over it, from i the revelry at night ' for the great fight. 
That part, however, of the Forest of Soignies, which 
should be on the right of the road, has been destroyed, 
to make way for the plough. What remains of the 
forest, on the left, consists of tall, straight, unbranch- 
ing beech, with the surface of the ground, between 
the trunks, clear and smooth. While we were at 
Hougomont a violent thunderstorm, accompanied with 



WATERLOO 



249 



heavy rain, drifted over the field. As the soil is a 
tenacious clay, which becomes very slippery when 
wet, this storm was most opportune, for it showed us 
what kind of footing the contending hosts had on the 
great day. Hougomont is still very much in the 
condition in which it was left on the evening of 
that day. What was burnt has not been rebuilt ; and 
what remained, has not been added to, or altered. The 
loop-holes that were made in the garden wall are still 
there. So also are the hedge, and ditch, on the outside 
of the orchard. The only difference is that the whole 
of the wood of Hougomont has gone the way of a 
part of the Forest of Soignies. We have all of us 
tried to understand Waterloo ; but a visit to the field 
itself will show that it is no more possible to under- 
stand, fully and rightly, this than any other battle, 
without ocular knowledge of the ground on which it 
was fought. A comparison of the field of Waterloo 
with that of Gravelotte will assist a civilian in esti- 
mating the extent of the change in tactics, which 
modern improvements in the weapons of war have 
necessitated. He will see that the battle of June 18, 
181 5, belongs to an order of things that is obsolete 
now. With the cannon, and rifles, of the present day, 
it could not have been fought as it was ; and would 
not, probably, have been fought where it was. 



250 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

HOW THE OBSERVATION AND KNOWLEDGE OF NATURE, AND 
THE CONDITIONS OF SOCIETY AFFECT RELIGION AND 
THEOLOGY. AN INSTRUCTIVE PARALLELISM. CONCLUSION. 

Consider the lilies of the field. — Gospel of St. Matthew. 
The powers that be are ordained of God. — Epistle to the Romans. 

It was 8 o'clock in the evening when I left Brussels, 
At 6 o'clock the next morning I stepped upon the 
platform of the Charing Cross Station. So ended, 
after very nearly five weeks, my little excursion. In 
the foregoing pages I have set down, not only what I 
saw, which could not have had much novelty, but the 
thoughts, also, as well about man as about nature, 
which what I saw suggested to me ; and these, too, may 
not have much value. To some, however, everything 
in nature is instructive and interesting, and so is 
everything in man ; or they seem to be so. But, in 
order to secure this instruction and interest, I believe 
that they must be viewed connectedly. The one is 
properly intelligible only by the light that shines from 



FACTORS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 251 

the other. To regard either separately is to misunder- 
stand both. Nature is the field in which He, Whose 
form no man hath seen at any time, reveals to us His 
Creative Power, for the purpose that the intelligent 
contemplation of the objects, He presents to our view, 
should engender in us certain sentiments and ideas, 
which have from the beginning, in the degree and 
form possible at each epoch, underlaid religion. Our 
fellow men are the field in which He reveals to us the 
capacities and conditions ; the strength, the weak- 
nesses, the workings, and the aspirations of moral 
and of intellectual being, as conditioned in ourselves : 
another, and perhaps a higher, revelation of Himself ; 
and the consciousness of which being in the indivi- 
dual constitutes, as far as we know, in this visible 
world of ours, the distinctive privilege of man ; and 
the exercise of which, under the sense of responsi- 
bility, crowns the edifice of religion. The study of 
both has been equally submitted to us, is equally our 
duty, and is necessary for the completion of our 
happiness. They are the correlated parts of a single 
revelation, and of a single study. The man who 
shuts his eyes to the one, or to the other, cannot 
understand, at all events as fully as he might, either 
that portion of the revelation at which he looks exclu- 
sively, or himself, or Him, Who makes the revelation, 
in the sense in which He has willed that each should 
be understood. 



252 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



The products of our modern advanced methods of 
agriculture bear the same kind of relation to the pro- 
ducts of the burnt stick (they could both support life, 
but very differently), that the religious sentiments and 
ideas produced by our knowledge of nature bear to 
those which the ignorant observation of a few promi- 
nent phenomena, as thunder and lightning, the power 
of the wind and of the sun, the action of fire, life and 
death, produced in the minds of the men of that re- 
mote day. The mind of the inhabitants of this coun- 
try, precisely like the land of this country, was just 
the same at that day as at this. The powers and 
capacities of each are invariable. What varies, and 
always in the direction of advance, is that which is 
applied to the mind : as is the case also with respect 
to the land. The knowledge of what produces the 
thunder and lightning, of the laws that govern the 
motions of the heavenly bodies, of what originates 
and calms the wind, of the forces of nature, of the 
structure of animals and plants, are so many instru- 
ments, by which the constant quantity, the human 
mind, is cultivated for greater productiveness. No 
one dreams that we have approached the end of such 
knowledge, any more than that our agriculture has 
reached its last advance. The state of knowledge, 
whatever it may be at any time (from that of our 
rudest forefathers to our own), produces correspond- 
ing ideas and sentiments. Its reception into the 



FACTORS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 



mind unfailingly generates those ideas and sentiments, 
just as the application of any method of agriculture, 
with the appliances that belong to it, gives the amount 
and kind of produce from the land proper to that 
method and to those appliances. As an instance 
taken from a highly civilized people, the close obser- 
vation of the instincts of animals, and of the proper- 
ties of plants, offered to the leisure, accompanied by 
some other favouring circumstances, of the ancient 
Egyptians, but unaccompanied by any knowledge of 
the laws, the forces, and the order of nature ; that is 
to say, their existing knowledge, together with the 
existing limitations to that knowledge, led unavoid- 
ably to the ideas and sentiments we find in them ; 
that is to say, to what was their religion, which com- 
bined the worship of plants and animals, with belief 
in a future life. 

The other self-acting factor to that organization of 
thought and sentiment, which is religion, is the ob- 
servation of what will perfect human society, and the 
life of the individual, under the conditions of their 
existence at the time. Certain things ought to be re- 
moved : it is religion to remove them. Certain things 
ought to be maintained : it is religion to maintain 
them. Certain things ought to be established : it is 
religion to establish them. Certain knowledge ought 
to be propagated : it is religion to propagate it. 

Now both these contributions to religion, the 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



knowledge of nature, which is inexhaustible, and the 
conditions of human society, which are endlessly 
multiform, are progressively variable quantities ; re- 
ligion, therefore, the resultant of the combined action 
of the two, must itself vary with them ; that is to say, 
must advance with them. 

It is a corollary to this, that from the day a re- 
ligion forms itself into a completed system, it becomes 
a matured fruit ; the perfected result of a train of 
anterior and contemporary conditions, that have 
long been working towards its production. Thence- 
forth it is useful for a time just as a fruit may be. It 
has, also, in itself, as a fruit has, the seed of a future 
growth. But with that exception, though still 
serviceable, it is dead, though organized, matter. A 
certain concurrence of conditions, which can never be 
repeated, because knowledge and society are ever ad- 
vancing, produced the fruit, which, like that of the 
aloe, can only be produced once out of its own con- 
currence of conditions. Man's spiritual nature feeds 
on that fruit, and is nourished by it, for a greater or 
less number of generations. At last, for it must 
come, a new concurrence of conditions arises, and a 
new fruit is produced. The vital germ that was in the 
old fruit, passed into the milieu of the new ideas and 
sentiments, and a new growth commenced. Organi- 
zation then ensued, and in due time bore, as its fruit, 
its own matured and perfected system. At the estab- 



CONSTRUCTION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 255 



lishment of Christianity, in the order of knowledge, 
the perception of the absurdity of thousands of local 
divinities, and, in the social and political order, the 
establishment of an Universal Empire, which gave 
rise to a sense of the brotherhood of mankind, com- 
bined in demanding that the whole organization of 
religious thought should be recast. Everyone can see 
the part these two facts had in the construction, and 
in bringing about the reception, of Christian ideas 
and Christian morality. In these days we see that 
social and political conditions are changing, though 
we cannot so exactly define and describe in what that 
change consists as we can that just referred to ; but 
we know that at the time of that change there was, 
though it was distinctly felt, the same absence of 
power to define and describe it distinctly. About the 
recent advance, however, in knowledge there is no 
want of distinctness : that is as palpable as it is, be- 
yond measure, greater than the advances of all former 
times. It amounts almost to a revelation of the con- 
stitution and order of nature. The ideas and senti- 
ments this new knowledge has given rise to are some- 
what different from, for instance they are grander and 
give more satisfaction to thought than, the ideas and 
sentiments that accompanied the knowledge, or rather 
the ignorance, on the same subjects, of two, or of one, 
thousand years back. This must have some effect on 
the religion of Christendom, and the effect cannot but 



256 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



be elevating and improving. This knowledge cannot 
possibly be bad, because it is only the attainment of 
the ideas, which, on the theory both of religion and 
of commonsense, were in the mind of the Creator be- 
fore they w r ere embodied in nature ; which were em- 
bodied in nature, and were submitted to us, in order 
that they might be attained to by us, for the sake of 
the effect the knowledge would have upon our minds, 
that is to say, ultimately on our religion. 

This knowledge, it is notorious, is not estimated 
in this way by many good men amongst us, they, 
on the contrary, being disposed to regard it rather 
with repugnance, horror, and consternation. The 
reason is not far to seek They have, probably, in all 
such cases, received only a theological and literary 
training. Now every theology, as is seen in the mean- 
ing of the word, and as belongs to the nature of the 
construction, contains an implicit assertion, both that 
no new knowledge, which can have any good influence 
on men's thoughts, sentiments, and lives, can be at- 
tained, subsequently to the date of its own formation ; 
and that the workings of human society will never lead 
to advances beyond those, which had at that time been 
reached. And literary training, in this country, has 
hitherto meant a kind of dilettante acquaintance with 
the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans, re- 
garded, not as a chapter in the moral and intellectual 
history of the race, but rather as supplying models for 



THEOLOGICAL AND LITERARY TRAINING 257 



expression. No wonder, then, need be felt at finding 
those, who are conversant only with what is dead, 
scared at the phenomena of life. The wonder would 
be if it were otherwise. But the same conditions, we 
all know, act differently on differently constituted 
minds : and this explains the opposite effect which 
modern criticism has upon the minds of some of those 
who have had only literary training. This criticism 
they find opposed to some of the positions of the old 
theology ; and the 'effect of this discovery upon them 
is that it makes them hostile to religion itself. As 
well might Newton have felt horror at the idea of gra- 
vitation because Ptolemy had believed in cycles and 
epicycles. It is the preponderance of literary training 
in them, also, that issues in this opposite result 

Religion is the organization of all that men know 
both of outward nature and of man, for the purpose 
of guiding life, of perfecting the individual and 
society, and of feeding the mind and the heart with 
the contemplation of the beauty and order of the 
universe, inclusive of man and of God, that is to say, 
of the conception we can form, at the time, of the All- 
originating, All-ordering, and All-governing Power. 
This is, ever has been, and ever will be Religion, unless 
we should pass into a New Dispensation, at present 
inconceivable, because it would require the recasting, 
at all events, of man, if not of the external conditions 
of his existence, that is, of the world also. But as long 

S 



258 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



as things continue as they have been, knowledge will 
always advance religion ; and religion will always con- 
form itself to knowledge. The essential difference 
between one religion and another, from Fetishism up 
to Christianity, is one of knowledge. 

Before the construction of systematic theologies, 
knowledge and religion were convertible terms. It 
was so under the Old Dispensation ; and so again in 
the early days of Christianity. After their construc- 
tion the former term was modified. It had been 
generic, it thenceforth became specific. The differen- 
tiating limitation imposed upon it was that of this 
particular theology, exclusive of all other theologies ; 
and, as it was a theology, this involved the exclusion 
of the ideas of correction and enlargement. 

Error and insufficiency must, from the nature of 
the materials dealt with, after a time be found in 
every theology. In this sense every Church has 
erred, and could not but have erred. The mischief, 
however, is. not in this error and insufficiency, for they 
are remediable. The progress of knowledge which 
points out the error, often indeed creating it by the in- 
troduction of additional data, supplies the means for 
correcting it ; and the advance in the conditions of 
society, which creates the insufficiency, suggests the 
means for correcting it, too. Nor, again, is the mis- 
chief in the ignorance of the majority, for that can to 
the extent required be removed. It is in the deter- 



THINGS NEW AS WELL AS OLD 



mination of some, from whom better things might 
have been expected, not to examine all things with 
the intention of holding fast that which is true ; but 
to close their eyes and ears, as theologians, against all 
that the educated world now knows, and all that the 
uneducated masses are repelled by in what is now 
presented to them as the Word of God. This deter- 
mination puts them in the position of being obliged 
to support, and encourage, only those who address 
themselves to the ignorance of the age, but not for the 
purpose of removing it; and to oppose^and discourage, 
those who address themselves to the knowledge of the 
age, for the purpose of making it religious. We need 
not repeat what we have been told will happen, when 
the blind lead the blind,. 

The recollection of what has given to our political 
constitution its orderly and peaceful development 
might be of use here. It goes on accommodating 
itself smoothly, and without convulsions, to the alter- 
ing conditions of society, because political parties 
amongst us are not coincident with classes. Members 
of the popular party are to be found in the highest 
classes as well as in the lowest, and of the stationary 
party in the lowest as well as in the highest. This is 
what has here exorcized the demon of revolution. If 
party lines had been drawn horizontally instead of 
vertically, class would have been arrayed against 
class; and, probably, ignorance and violence, supported 

s 2 



260 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



by numbers, would have made a clean sweep of our 
institutions, and, to no small extent, of our civiliza- 
tion. What has been advantageous in the political 
order would be equally so in the religious. What 
has saved us from a political, might, if adopted, 
save us from a possible religious, crash. It is a 
miserably short-sighted policy to endeavour to drive 
from the camp of religion, or of the National Church, 
those who have accepted the knowledge of our times, 
and who have sympathies with the existing tenden- 
cies or possibilities of society : so that on one side 
shall be arrayed only those, who rest on what is old, 
and on the other only those, who have no disposition 
to reject what is new. Whereas the true bridge from 
the present to the future can be constructed by 
neither of these parties alone ; but must be the work 
of those, whose wish and effort are to combine, and to 
harmonise, the new with the old. This appreciation 
of what is needed, is, at all events, in accordance with 
the meaning of the saying, to the authority of which 
we must all defer, that ' every scribe, who is instructed 
unto the Kingdom of Heaven, will bring forth out of 
his treasures things new as well as old.' The course 
taken by those, who lose sight of the guidance offered 
them in this saying, can only bring them into a false 
position. 

It is very instructive to observe how circumstances 
analogous to those, which existed among the chosen 



AN INSTRUCTIVE PARALLELISM 261 



people, at the date of the promulgation of Christianity, 
are, at this moment, amongst ourselves producing 
analogous effects. We have lately heard those, who 
are attempting to make the knowledge, men have 
now been permitted to attain to, an element of reli- 
gion, which is what knowledge must always become 
in the end, described as ' maudlin sentimentalists.* 
Precisely the same expression, motived by precisely 
the same feelings, and ideas, might have been applied 
with the same propriety, or impropriety, and with the 
same certainty of disastrous recoil on those who used 
it, to the teaching of the Divine Master Himself. He 
appealed from the hard, narrow, rigid forms, in which 
the old Law had been fossilized, to the sense men 
had come to have of what was moral, and needed, and 
to the knowledge they had come to have of what was 
true, under the then advanced conditions of society 
and of knowledge. The maintainers of the fossilized 
Law were for binding heart and mind fast in the 
fetters of dogmatic human traditions. He was for 
setting mind and heart free by the reception of what 
was broad and true ; at once human and divine. That 
alone was desirable, beneficent, and from God. It 
blessed, strengthened, emancipated, and gave peace. 
No authority, however venerable, could be pleaded 
against it. No thrones, principalities, or powers, how- 
ever exalted, would be able to withstand it. There 
was no fear or possibility of its being refuted : for it 



262 



A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



was nothing but the perception, and the practical re- 
cognition, of existing knowledge, and of existing con- 
ditions. Men, they might be many, might reject it, 
but to their own detriment only. The facts would re- 
main. The rest, all whose eyes were open, or could 
be opened, to perceive what was before their eyes, 
would receive it as from God. The more it was set 
in the broad light of day the better. It must be pro- 
claimed in the highways, and the market-places, and 
in the Temple itself. If those who had received it 
were to hold their peace, the stones would immediately 
cry out. It was God's Truth. It was God's Word : 
not because it was written, for as yet it was not written, 
but because, as the Word of God ever had, and ever 
would, come, it came from the pure heart, and the en- 
lightened understanding, and approved itself to those, 
who had eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hearts to 
understand. Let every one examine it. If in that 
day had been known what is now known of man's 
history, and of nature, and of what is seen of the pos- 
sibility of raising men, throughout society, to a higher 
moral and intellectual level than was heretofore attain- 
able, we may be sure that there would have been no 
attempt to discredit such knowledge, and such aspira- 
tions; and that they would have been urged as ex- 
tending our knowledge of God, and of His will ; that 
they would have been appealed to, and that men 
would have been called upon to raise themselves to 



RESPONSIBILITY IN FORMING OPINIONS 263 



the level of what had become conceivable, and, con- 
ceivably, attainable. At all events, the one great 
point, the one paramount duty, was to proclaim what 
was then seen to be true. To keep back nothing. To 
care nothing for the consequences-, in the way of what 
it might overthrow ; to be ready to spend and be 
spent for the consequences, in the way of the good it 
must produce. The requisite boldness would come to 
its promulgators from feeling, that it was God's work, 
and that He was on their side. The issue could not 
be doubtful. The Gates of Hell could not prevail 
against the Truth. It was, notwithstanding its 
4 maudlin sentimentality,' mighty to the pulling down 
of strongholds ; and went forth conquering, and to 
conquer. So will it do again. So will it do ever. 
The parallelism is complete at every point. It is only 
strange that it has not been seen, and dwelt upon, till 
all have become familiar with it. The facts, the 
situation, the ideas, the hopes and fears, are the same. 
So, too, is the language needed to describe them, each 
and all. 

The thoughts, which this chapter outlines, were 
often, as might be supposed, in my mind during the 
little excursion described in the foregoing pages. 
They are, as far as I can see, the logical and inevit- 
able conclusions of the acquaintance some have, such 
as it may be, with history and with physical science ; 
and I suppose that travelling further along the same 



264 A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND 



road would only enable them to see the object to 
which it leads with more distinctness. In Switzerland 
there is much both in the singularly varied mental con- 
dition of the people themselves, and in the impressive 
aspects of nature, to confirm them. The narrative, 
though its form, in keeping with the particular purpose 
in which it originated, is at times somewhat minute, 
may yet, as things w 7 ere, for the most part, seen and 
regarded through the medium of ideas I have just 
referred to, contribute a little to their illustration. It 
was my wish, at all events, that my mind and heart 
should be always open, unreservedly, to the teaching 
of all that I saw, both of man and of nature ; but still, 
I trust, with that caution, and sense of responsibility, 
that befit the formation of opinions, by w r hich — for 
one is conscious that they are the inner man, the true 
self — one must stand, or fall, and in which one must 
live, and die. 



INDEX. 



AAR 

A AR, 150-2 

Aigle, 183 
Absenteeism, 43 

Agriculture, capital improves, 60. 
In the United States, 69. Burnt 
stick and hoe eras, 81. Pro- 
gress in size of farms, 83-5. In 
Alsace, 230 
American lads mountaineering, 1 3 
Americans in Switzerland, 200 
Animal worship, rationale of, in 

the ancient Egyptians, 253 
Antithesis, an Alpine, 13 
Anza, 126 

Apostolism, true, 243 
Armies of the Romans, 141 
Art, place of, in religion, 241 
Auroch, 212 

Austrian marriages, 100. Waiter, 
244 

Avalanches, 22, 158 



T>LUE boy, 13, 16, 141, 142, 
*-> 154,163, 164, 171, 184-193 
Bonus amicus pro vehiculo, 133 
Breakfast at a monster hotel, 195 
Bridge, from the present to the 

future, 260 
Brieg, 140 
Brienz, 155 

Brussels, 247. Hotel de Ville, 
unsatisfactory, 248 



CHR 



Bubble schemes why alluring, 67 
Buffers, our labourers have three, 

105, 106 
Butterflies, 53, 151 



RAMPING out, 177 

^ Capital, power of, in modern 
societies, 50. Revolution ef- 
fected by, 53. Inversion of 
land and, 54. Peel and Glad- 
stone, due to, 55. A ladder, 56. 
Era of, on Visp-side, 50-66. 
Will improve agriculture, 61. 
Flow of, to the land will 
counterbalance cities, 62. 
Moral and intellectual effects, 
63. Increases size of agricul- 
tural concerns, 85. Size of 
estates in era of, 94. Is king, 
103. Essence of all property, 
106, 107. Uses of, discrimi- 
nated, 108, 109 

Carpet, magical bit of, 3 

Caterpillar, 53, 127 

Cathedral of Metz, 238-242 

Ceppo Morelli, 127 

Certificates of land-shares, 87, 89, 
93, 94 

C'est un pauvre pays, 217 
Change, modern craving for, 4, 5 
Christianity, in what sense a recast 
of religious thought, 255. A 



266 



INDEX 



CHU 



GAS 



modern parallel to the ground 
taken by first promulgators of, 
261-3 

Church, value of establishment, 
65. Effect of disestablishment, 
97 

Cities, land counterpoise to, 62 ; 
and land, 93 

Classics, place of, in English edu- 
cation, 222, 223. Unfairly 
weighted, 226 

Colmar and Mulhouse, cotton in- 
dustry of, 230 

Continuity of human history, 213 

Co-operation inapplicable to land, 
104-6 

Corporate estates, 74, 76, 96 
Cost of Swiss travel, 176 
Coups manques of humanity, 202 
Cranoges, Irish and Scotch, 210 
Cure of Sainte Marie aux Chenes, 
235 



T^ANUBE, Roman road on the 

^ banks of the, 126 

Dinner, last, in London, 3. At 

Macugnaga, 125. At a monster 

hotel, 196 
Disorder, temporary, permitted at 

Strasbourg and Metz, 246 
Distel, 122 

Dogs, why bay the moon, 181 

Domo D'Ossola, 128 

Drama of the Mountains, 184-193 

Drunkenness, how may be dis- 
couraged, 85. Want of drink- 
water a cause of, 209 

Dust, 174 



T^CLIPSE, feelings caused by, 
^ 182 
Edelweiss, 161 

Education, property is an, 33. 
What would promote, 84. 
Spread of, unfavourable to 



existing land-system, 97. 
Range and method of teaching, 
192, 193. Swiss aims, 218-221. 
How applicable, and how not, 
to us, 221-223. Sciences of 
humanity needed, 221, 222. 
Imagination should be culti- 
vated, 223. Place of poetry in, 
224 

Eggishhorn, 143 

Elsass, agricultural wealth of, 230 

Empire, how retained, 245 

Enthusiastic ladies, 200 

Establishments, religious, useful 
under landlordism, 65. Effect 
of disestablishment, 97 

Etymology of field, 82. Of Scot- 
land, 247 

Expected, what is, seldom hap- 
pens, 245 

Eyes in back of the head, 97 



F 



ALLOWS abandoned, 83 



Falls of Frosinone, 135. 
Another, 136. Aar and Han- 
deck, 152. Staubbach, 152. 
Reichenbach, 154 
Fee, 116 

Field, etymology of, 82 
Feudalism, none in our land- 
lordism, 77 
Findelen, 17 

Fireworks at Interlaken, 164 
Flies, 147 
Flowers, 14, 18 

France, a cause of its wealth, 98. 

Insisted on war, 231 
French petty proprietors, 105, 

xo6, no 
Frosinone, 135 
Fruit, religion is a, 254 
Fungus, a Brobdingnagian, 144 



C* AME, %2 

^ Gasteren, 167 



INDEX 



267 



GAU 

Gauter, 139 
Gemmi, 16 7- 7 1 

Geneva, Lake of, excavated by 

glacier, 8 
Genius loci, 133 

Geology of Rhone Valley, 7. Of 
Alpine valleys, 134. Of Delta 
of the Kander, 166 

German professor, 114. Tra- 
vellers, 156, 201. At Grave- 
lotte, 232-6. At Metz, 237. 
Conquests will be retained, 
245 

Glacier action, 7. Bies 3 9. Gor- 
ner, 9. Fee, 116. Allalein, 
119. Kaltenwasser, 138, 
Rhone, 146. Old Aar, 150. 
Grindelwald, 162 

Gladstone, the Right Hon. 
W. E., 55 

Gneiss, channel how cut in, 151 

God, the focal name, 239 

Gondo, 135 

Gorner Grat, 12 

Government, modern Swiss, 146 
Gravelotte, battle of, 232-6 
Grimsel, 149 
Grindelwald, 160 
Guide, 18, 115, 123, 127 
Guttanen, 153 



TTANDECK, 151, 152 

A Health, better to keep than 

to recover, 183 
Helle Platte, 150 
History, continuity of, 213 
Homer, a simile of his, 178, 183 
Honesty, 36, 39 
Hornli, 17 

Hospice, Simplon, 135. Grim- 
sel, 148, 149 

Hotels, St. Niklaus, 8. Riffel, 
16. Saas, 115. Mattmark 
See, 120. Macugnaga, 125. 
Ponte Grande, 127. Domo 
D'Ossola, 128. Simplon, 135. 



KNI 

Du Glacier du Rhone, 147. 
Interlaken, 156. Grindelwald, 
161. Schwarenbach, 168. 
Swiss monster hotels, 194-204. 
Zurick, 215. Metz, 244 

Human interest of improved agri- 
culture, 86 

Humanity, sciences of, place in 
education, 221 

Humility, true, 216 



TCE sent from Grindelwald to 
Paris, 162. Ice-field of Ber- 
nese Oberland, 174 

Ignorance of the day, some ad- 
dress themselves to, but not 
for the purpose of removing it, 
259 

Imagination, place in education, 
223. How to be cultivated, 
224 

Imhof, 153 

Industry, Swiss, 34-8, 46, 129 
Intellectual life among peasant 
proprietors, 32. Under land- 
lordism, 48. Under capital, 63, 
107 

Interlaken, 155, 156 
Investments for all, 87, 88 
Invidious position, 101, 102 
Italians compared to Swiss, 129 



JACK of many trades, 118 
Joint-stock cultivation of the 
land, 78-89 
Jungfrau, 156-8 



TT'ANDER, Delta of the, 166 

Kandersteg, 167 
King, capital is, 103 
Kitchen-maids, acquisition and 

use of capital within reach of, 

109 

Knights' fees, number of, 77 



268 



INDEX 



KNO 



NON 



Knowledge, what it is, 227. 
Grammatical and theological 
studies obscure, 229. Its effects 
on religion, 257 



T AKE-VILLAGES, 210-215 
Land, reclamation and culti- 
vation of, 21. In Greece and 
Rome, 51. In feudal times, 52. 
Inversion of land and capital, 
54. Settlement of, prevents 
distribution, 70. Joint-stock 
principle applicable to, 78. 
Land mobilised, 88. Increased 
value under joint-stock cultiva- 
tion, 88, 89. Land and cities, 
93. Size of landed estates in 
era of capital, 94. Might be 
sold subject to rent-charge, 95. 
Tendency of things with respect 
to ; corporate estates, 96. Dis- 
establishment, 97. Increasing 
size of estates, 97. Education, 

97. Perception of cause of 
wealth of France, 98. Increase 
in our population and wealth, 

98. Popular character of 
modern legislation, 99. Rise 
in cost of labour, 99. How two 
kinds of wills affect land, 1 10. 
Culture and price of, in Switzer- 
land, 206 

Landlordism, 41, 50. Political 
effects in Ireland and Scotland, 
in 

Landowners, advantage to, of joint- 
stock cultivation of the land, 89. 
Diminishing numbers, 97 

Lausanne, 3 

Lauterbrunnen, 157 

Leukabad, 172-4 

Life, who scared by phenomena of, 
257 

Literary and theological training, 

effects of, 256 
Lords of creation, 124 



Lothringen, 231 

Lowe, Right Hon. R., 65 

Luxembourg, 247 



TWT ACUGNAGA, 125 

^ Magician,, capital a, 107 

Man, conditions antecedent to, 
ib6 

Matterhorn, 12, 17, 18 
Mattmark See, 119., 120 
Meiringen, 153 

Men and women highest form of 
wealth, 32 

Methods of teaching, 192, 193 

Metz, 230 

Money lords, 5.5 

Monte Leone, 138 

Moon on the Jungfrau, 165. 
Witchery of the, 179. Why 
dogs bay, 181 

Moral value of peasant -proprietor- 
ship, 34-40. Under landlord- 
ism, 46 

Morality, man lives not only by 

or for, 40 
Moro, Monte, 123 
Mortmain, history of abolition of, 

74. Its failure, 75 
Mother of Cure of Ste. Marie aux 

Chenes, 235 
Mountaineering, 10, 19, 20 
Mountains seen face to face, 121 
Minister, 144 

Museum of Lake Villages, 210, 
Myriad-minded, 223 



AJATURE, 192, 225 

Nautical felicity, 6 
New world's contributions to old. 



Niesen, 175 

Nonconformity, strength 
weakness of, 241, 242 



and 



INDEX 



269 



OBE 

QBERWALD, 146 

^ Opinion, how stream of 

tendency affects, 99 
Organisation, religious, 241 
Ownership of land, proposed form 

of, 89 



pAGANISM, modern, 26 

Parallelism of the present 
religious situation and that at 
the promulgation of Christianity, 
261-3 

Paris, I 

Parquetry flooring, 182 
Pauper, euthanasia of agricultural, 
86 

Peak-climbers and pass-men, 10, 

18, 175, 199 
Peasant-proprietorship, 29-40. 

Impossible here, 94. French, 

105, 106, no 
Pedestrianism, pedantry of, 144 
Peel, Sir R., 55 
Personal worth, 103 
Physical science teaches what truth 

is, 228 

Picturesque will not stop advances, 
86 

Pie de Mulera, 128 
Pinus Cembra, II, 159. Pumilio, 
150 

Platform road, 126 
Poetry of Vale of Grindelwald, 
161. Classical and modern, 
224 
Pompeii, 52 
Ponte Grande, 127 
Poor law, rationale of, 106 
Population under peasant-proprie- 
torship, 31. Under landlordism, 
45 

Porter and practical man, 156 
Possibilities, 27 
Post-office, Swiss, 118 
Potatovors, Irish, 105, 106 
Practical man and porter, 156 



STE 

Prasias, Lake, 210 

Prayers played for, 24 

Primogeniture, 90 

Property, educational effects of, 

33 . ' 
Prophesying, place of, in religion, 

241, 242 
Prospects of great proprietors, 100 



T) AILWAYS, delays on Swiss, 
1V 138 

Recolte des voyageurs, 217 

Reichenbach, falls of, 154 

Religion, 25. Its primitive and 
modern forms, 145, Relation 
to art, organisation, and pro- 
phesying, 141, 142. Error 
and perversion in, 242, 243. 
Relation of the knowledge of 
nature and of man to, 251. 
How affected by the conditions 
of society, 253. Progressive, 
254. A parellelism, 261-3 

Religious establishments, when 
useful, 64 

Rent-charge, land might be sold 
subject to, 95 

Responsibility in the formation of 
opinions, 264 

Revolution, a great but bloodless, 
53 

Rhone, Delta of Upper, 7. 

Source of, 146 
Rififel, 11, 16 

Rocky mountains, young pines in, 
160. Camping-out in, 177 

Romanism, decay of, 25, 26. 
How uses art, organisation, 
and prophesying, 241 



CAAS, 113 121 
^ Sac, lost, 131 
St. Niklaus, 8, 21 
Ste. Marie aux Chenes, fight in, 
234. Mother of cure of, 233 



270 



INDEX 



SAL 

Saltine, 139 
Saracens, 124 

Savings' tank for all, 87, 109 

Scene from Gorner Grat, 12. 
Valley of Saas, Ii3. Matt- 
mark, 120. Macugnaga, 125. 
Gemmi, 169 

Schwartz See, 16, 17 

Scotland, a Belgian's etymology 
of, 247 

Selborne, White of, 4. Lord, 4, 65 
Self, when to be considered, 132. 

When not, 243 
Sermon on the Riffel, 15. Effect 

of fluency and imagination on, 

165 

Settlement of land prevents dis- 
tribution, 70. Action of settled 
estates, 72. How preventible, 
73 

Shawls, fine, better than rugs, 117 
Simplon, 13 1-9 

Size of estates in era of capital, 94 
Slavery, 82 

Society, conditions of, affect re- 
ligion, 253 

Sprite, the reprobrate, 203 

Spurgeon, Mr., 239, 243 

Stalden, 113 

Steam culture, 83 

Stenches in hotels, 8, 147, 148 

Stone age, 81, 211 

Strasbourg, 230 

Sugar factories, 84 

Sun, colourless risings, 175. Of 
England has set, 202. A good 
sunset, 216, 217 

Swiss life in a valley, 23, 29 40. 
Compared with Italians, 129. 
Monster hotels, 194-204. 
Swiss sights suggestive, 264 



REACHING, range and method 
1 of, 192, 193 _ 
Technical University of Zurich, 
218 



WAT 

Tendency of events as respects 
land, 96 

Tents, travelling with, in Swit- 
zerland, 177 
Testimony, fallibility of, 118 
Theology, 256 
Thun, 163 

Too soon but late at last, 168 

Travel, order of, 5 

Travellers in monster hotels, 198. 

Swiss, classified, 199 203 
Trust -funds, investment proposed 

for, 89 
Twice as clever, 171 



T JNITED STATES, answer to 
^ a question asked in the, 68 

Agriculture of, 69 
Urus, 212 



UAL ANZASCA, 126, 129, 130 

Valleys, geology of Alpine, 
134. View of Grindelwald, 160 
Venice, 210 
Verrieres, 2 

Villages of Upper Rhone Valley, 
144. Old Lake, 210-215 

Vines and vineyards, 205 

Virgin, the Holy, at Ste. Marie 
aux Chenes, 236 

Virtue, highest form of, 38 

Visp, 8. Life and religion in Val- 
ley of the, 21-27. Thoughts 
about land suggested by the 
Valley of the, 28-112 

Voiturier, boorish, 143. Dilatory, 
165. Payment should depend 
on time, 166 



WATER-SUPPLY in Switzer- 
land, 206-9. ^ n England, 
207, 208. Would lessen drun- 
kenness, 209 

Waterloo, 248, 249 



INDEX 



271 



WEA 

Weather, 175 

Well-being, constituents of, 40 

Wengern Alp, 157, 1 58 

Wheat cultivated by Old Lake 

villagers, 212 
White of Selborne, 4 
Widows and younger children 

provided for by landowners, 

93 

Wife, 5, 142, 162, 168, 171 
Wildstrubel, 169 
Will strengthened, 139 



ZUR 

Wills, two errors with respect to, 

no 
Wine, 197 
Wood carving, 155 



VERM ATT, 9, io, 115 

^ Zmutt glacier, 17 

Zurich Museum of lake village 
antiquities, 210-215. Modern 
city, 214. Technical Univer- 
sity, 218 



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A Winter in the United States: 

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